At the G7 and NATO summits, the West was left without trump cards

Last week, the G7 and NATO summits were held, and the results of these events allow us to give a qualitative assessment of the current state of the alliance of countries of the generalised West.

The G7 summit was held in Germany from June 26 to 28, in the remote castle of Elmau, in order to make it more difficult for protesters to prevent it from being held. Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, France, and Japan were supposed to demonstrate unity against the backdrop of Russia's actions in Ukraine.

Although the G7 summit has always been a formal gathering of leading Western countries, this time the media pinned high hopes on it, since all previous decisions did not affect the policy pursued by Russia, many expected decisive action from the G7.

The DW correspondent, commenting on the summit, mentioned an article in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which said that "the summit has a chance to become historic or go down in history" and, indeed, the expected unity of the G7 countries could not be demonstrated.

Germany, France and Italy did not support the US’ proposal to impose sanctions on the sale of Russian gold, citing the need to coordinate this issue with other EU countries.

Negotiations on the possible introduction of a ceiling on Russian oil prices also did not reach a concrete result. The final document of the summit says only about the intentions to continue the work of the G7 in these areas.

Politico magazine, which is closely associated with the ruling Democratic Party of the United States, published an article with the headline "A self-defeating G7 fails on all fronts" starting with climate issues and Ukraine, ending with the coming famine and inflation.

Since the summit was originally planned to be dedicated to climate change, this article begins with the climate agenda and immediately states that the G7 suffered a complete fiasco, since it was a question of returning to fossil fuels in general.

The next issue was Ukraine, and the article states that the G7 is not able to stop the fighting. In addition, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned French President Emmanuel Macron that now is not the time to think about resolving the war through diplomatic means.

Let me remind you that the day before the summit, the heads of the United States and Germany called for a diplomatic settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, so the G7 camp clearly has different views on resolving this issue.

The Politico article mentions that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky called on the G7 to help Ukraine with weapons and said it was necessary to end the conflict by the winter of this year. The G7 final document refers to indefinite support for Ukraine, but without any specifics.

At the final press conference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the G7 countries are only discussing security guarantees for Ukraine. A little later, Scholz was asked if he could specify the guarantees to Ukraine. "Yes, I could" - Scholz joked "that's all", this was the German Chancellor's answer to the burning Ukrainian question.

The G7 countries adopted a $600 billion infrastructure plan to lay the foundations for green energy in Africa, Latin America and Asia. No one hides the fact that this project is being created to compete with the Chinese project "One Belt, One Road".

The heads of state of South Africa, India, Indonesia, Argentina and Senegal, which holds the presidency of the African Union, were specially invited to the G7 summit. It is not difficult to guess that the G7 wanted these countries to take their side in countering Russia, but there were no condemnatory statements from these countries.

In early June, CNN called the visit of the President of Senegal to Moscow a diplomatic victory for Vladimir Putin, as the picture of Russia's political isolation due to the conflict in Ukraine does not add up. After the introduction of sanctions, India became one of the main buyers of Russian oil. Also, recently it became known about the desire of Argentina to join BRICS.

A German expert on foreign policy, in an interview with DW, said that the G7 example shows the limited influence of Western countries on the rest of the world, right before our eyes it becomes not unipolar, not even bipolar, but multipolar and, above all, this is a consequence of the end of US hegemony. A columnist for the German publication Welt writes that a real anti-western bloc is being built out of BRICS, to which other countries are also gravitating.

From June 29 to 30, the NATO summit was held in Madrid, which was also supposed to show the consolidation of the alliance countries in front of Russia. As Welt wrote, Germany and France at the NATO summit were going to insist on preserving the Russia-NATO Founding Act of 1997.

Unlike the old document, the new strategic concept of NATO until 2030, adopted at this summit, recognises Russia not as a partner, but as the main threat to the alliance. It is planned that in the near future, NATO will increase the number of high-readiness forces on the eastern flank to 300,000 people. It is worth noting that we are not talking about new soldiers, but about increasing the mobilisation capabilities of existing units of the alliance members.

Despite all this, Olaf Scholz, answering a journalist's question, stressed that the Russia-NATO Founding Act of 1997 remains in force. At the same time, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said that Poland believes that the Russia-NATO Founding Act has ceased to exist, and the decisions announced at the NATO summit on expanding the alliance's presence on the eastern flank were proof of this.

The intrigue of the NATO summit was the decision to admit Sweden and Finland to the alliance, which was long prevented by Turkey, setting fundamental conditions of the governments of these two Scandinavian countries refusing to support the Kurdish separatists. At the summit, it was publicly announced that all obstacles in front of Sweden and Finland joining NATO had been removed.

However, the day after the summit, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said: "Without the approval of our parliament, this work will still not go ahead. No need to fuss. Currently, Sweden and Finland are not members of NATO. You need to know this once and for all." Accordingly, Turkey still expects Sweden and Finland to meet certain conditions.

On the issue of Ukraine, the head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, declared its full support, but no one publicly spoke about any security guarantees that Zelensky asked for, speaking at the NATO summit. NATO provides assistance to Ukraine only with non-lethal equipment, at the same time there are plans to transfer Ukraine to NATO standards, as Stoltenberg explained. NATO countries provide weapons assistance to Ukraine independently, the head of NATO welcomed the increase in military assistance to Ukraine by about $1 billion announced yesterday by US President Joe Biden.

Biden himself again made a reservation during his speech at the NATO summit: "We are going to stick with Ukraine and all of the Alliance is going to stick with Ukraine as long as it takes to, in fact, make sure that they are not defeated by — by Ukraine — I mean, excuse me, in Ukraine by — by Russia”. This reservation is by no means accidental.

As was reported by CNN, the White House doubts that Ukraine will be able to regain the lost territories and, based on this reality, they are trying to determine what can be passed off as a victory for Ukraine. The head of the US State Department, Antony Blinken, is already trying to pass off as a victory for Ukraine only the fact that Kiev was not taken by Russian troops.

As was reported by the Politico magazine, the American delegation, represented by Member of the House of Representatives Gerry Connolly, was confronted at the NATO summit with unexpected activity of diplomats from other countries about the decision of the US Supreme Court on the ban on abortion, many expressed their concern.

Connolly was concerned that turns in American politics could undermine confidence in the United States and strengthen the view among NATO partners that the United States cannot be trusted in the declared values of the 21st century. ”All the assurances that 'we're back' and 'don't look over the shoulder of the last four years' are somewhat blurred," Connolly said. "This undermines the credibility of our system. This is very important when we are supposed to help lead a military alliance to counter the 'big bad Russians'."

Naturally, this whole topic of conservative decisions of the US Supreme Court comes in the context of the possible re-election in 2024 of Donald Trump, who had a negative attitude towards NATO and, if the head of the White House changes, all previous agreements may go to waste.

Britain's Sunday Times reported that NATO has split into three parts altogether – into "hawks" who want not only Ukraine to regain all the lost territories, but also to inflict a serious defeat on Russia so that it cannot threaten its neighbours in the future.

"Doves" are in favour of peace in Ukraine and would agree with the withdrawal of Russian troops to the borders that existed before February 24, with the de facto recognition of Crimea as Russian and the independence of the two people's republics. “Such a deal would be unfair, but it is practical,” said an official in a Scandinavian country.

There are also "ostriches" who simply want the Ukrainian problem to disappear. Especially in the south of Europe, they say the "right things” and support collective communiques, but they tend to be "dovish", although, in fact, they follow the path of least resistance.

The Sunday Times notes that NATO has not decided to deploy ground troops to take part in combat operations, because of the risk of provoking a catastrophic escalation with Russia. Nevertheless, the idea of deploying small contingents of NATO troops in cities of western Ukraine, far from the front line, to counter missile attacks of Russian troops was less directly discussed, but such proposals were quickly abandoned due to lack of consensus.

Summing up the results of these summits, we can say that the West is now in a passive position, only reacting to Russia's actions. According to the German Spiegel, Western countries have been developing sanctions against Russia since November 2021 and, therefore, their introduction took place so quickly, but at the moment, the sanctions potential is exhausted, but this has not affected the policy pursued by Russia in any way.

It is increasingly difficult for the West to form "sanctions packages" as their negative effect is hitting them harder and harder, and Russia has room for manoeuvre. So, for example, the Russian president signed a decree on the transfer to the state of the property of the Sakhalin 2 operator, thereby putting the choice between the Anglo-Dutch Shell and the Japanese Mitsui & Co and Mitsubishi need to violate sanctions, or withdraw from this gas project.

In March, the US president called for Russia to be excluded from the G20, but was ignored by the host country, Indonesia. Vladimir Putin received an offer to take part in the G20. Indonesian President Joko Widodo was the first foreign leader to visit Moscow after the start of a special operation in Ukraine.

However, he did not leave empty-handed. As it became known, investments in the construction of an oil refinery with the participation of Rosneft in Indonesia may amount to $13 billion, and Russian Railways will build a railway line with a length of about 190 kilometres.

This once again confirms that the time of US hegemony has passed, and they will have to integrate into the current reality, there will be no return to a unipolar world. The concept of a "green transition" proposed by Western countries, which was supposed to put developing countries in a subordinate position, has shown its inconsistency. The Europeans themselves are increasing coal generation, which they should have abandoned.

During the G7 and NATO summits, the West had to show the world its consolidated position and show determination towards Russia. However, this did not happen, everything was limited to public rhetoric, and not concrete actions. Behind the verbal facade of Western unity, the unwillingness of "countries of the civilised world" to bear the costs of ill-considered decisions has surfaced.

Even in the military-political alliance of NATO, there is a split, although politicians and the media suggested that the West faces an existential threat to their "rule-based order", and therefore it is allegedly impossible to turn away from the path of confrontation with Russia. In fact, having realised that Ukraine cannot win, NATO now adheres to an inertial scenario of events.

Previous reports have already described that the United States cannot allow Ukraine to be defeated before the November congressional elections and, therefore, is sending limited military assistance to prevent the conflict with Russia from escalating itself.

It is characteristic that no American officials mention lend-lease for Ukraine. Of course, the "hawks" in the West would like to squeeze out the entire military potential of Ukraine, but even Zelensky explained that it will last only until the winter of this year.

That is why the Western media are already preparing their audience for the fact that they will still have to negotiate peace agreements with Russia on Ukraine, but we should show more patience and perseverance in achieving the goals of the special military operation, in order to later build a new European security architecture from a stronger position.