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30.8.2017
One conventional criticism of the role and future of the BRICS grouping is internal tensions and conflicts between its members. We may just have witnessed the opposite effect. The firm deadline of the next summit in Xiamen from 3–5 September exerted an external discipline on China and India to resolve a ten-week military standoff at the tri-junction with Bhutan. The narrow Doklam Plateau is a 90km strip at an altitude of over 4,000 metres that China lays claim to as ...
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26.8.2017
The BRICS have long defied the expectations from its detractors that it is an artificial and unsustainable construct. Moving beyond the original identification of specific countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) deemed to possess a similar set of developmental characteristics by Goldman Sachs, BRICS took on an institutional format. With annual summits since 2009 BRICS has taken on a sustained personality. In terms of membership the profile of BRICS has been extended ...
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23.8.2017
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation represents a rare example of two rising powers establishing their own organisation. It fulfils several roles: an alternative to West-led institutions, a driver of regional integration, and an unaffiliated platform for Russian-Chinese negotiations. Both countries perceive Central Asia important for themselves. For China, it’s a land of opportunities: natural resources (above all – gas) and logistics (infamous project of ...
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16.8.2017
The G20, the club of the supposedly 19 most important countries plus the European Union, is in deep trouble. The gnawing question on legitimacy has been joined by fundamental doubts whether the elitist format at the apex of the global system can, indeed, deliver in face of rising nationalism and authoritarian egotism. The G20 sees itself not as concert of powers but rather as guardian of the global common good, determined to promote the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable ...
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12.8.2017
The Doklam standoff has monopolized the news over the last weeks. It is not every day that the world observes two Asian global powers, India and China for instance, wrestling over a territory. So what is really behind this conflict? The Protagonists: Modi, Xi… and Trump. Since Modi took office in 2014, he has developed close relations with both Japan and the US, rejecting OBOR and China (its historical ‘problematic’ neighbor) fiercely. Knowing that the couple Japan-China ...
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19.7.2017
The 12th G20 summit meeting convened in Hamburg on the July 7-8th 2017 has raised a pertinent uneasily answered question: Will this salient event pave the way for the G20 to play a leading global role in creating a New Globalized Just Order? The predicament of G20 centres on going beyond the fulfilment of its prime mission of acting as “a kind of steering committee of global governance”. What gives the G20 such a distinct power leverage is that it represents two – ...
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17.7.2017
The global surge in refugees has left most of the financial burden to developing countries in volatile regions. According to the UNHCR low and middle-income countries play the greatest role in sheltering the world’s displaced (UNHCR, 2016). Developing countries in the global south have been looking into cooperating and learning from the best practices as a result of the abandonment by the developed countries. The global neglect has also left developing countries with the ...
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8.7.2017
The Hamburg G20 Summit reaffirmed the decentralizing authority in global economic governance. Echoing aspects of the May 2017 Taormina G7 Summit, it further indicated the recent ‘G6/19 + 1’ dynamic in informal global governance. Nearly a year since my earlier piece here on the G20, it seems a lot has changed in world politics. There are deep concerns about the prospects for the G20 and multilateral cooperation, especially on climate change, trade, and economic growth. ...
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27.6.2017
When Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and some other Arab states recently issued a list of 13 demands for Qatar to fulfill in order for the blockade against it to be lifted, it was eerily reminiscent of the demands issued by the Austro-Hungarian Empire against Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. Those demands, like the ones issued to Qatar, were designed to be rejected, so as to give a pretense for further action. In 1914, this led to World War I. In ...
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21.6.2017
Conflicts and disasters take a huge toll on people’s lives and aspirations. The loss of life, livelihoods, homes and assets is a testament to the destructive impacts of crises. When the ability of communities and governments to provide relief and protection to affected people is lacking or overwhelmed, international humanitarian actors try to meet these needs. They are often described collectively as the ‘international humanitarian system’, and include donor governments, ...
