The G-7 Is Outdated. But It Still Matters

Time​ Magazine

a day ago

It's easy to dismiss the G-7, a club of wealthy democracies set up in 1975 to coordinate trade and global economic policy. This year's summit —held on June 15-17 in Kananaskis, Canada—comes at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is upending the global economy with tariffs and has repeatedly threatened to make the host nation America's '51st state.'
The G-7 is also an anachronism. It was set up five decades ago to include the world's largest economies, but today China and India, two economic heavyweights, are not members. The G-7 has simply not kept pace as the global distribution of wealth and power shifts from West to East and North to South.
Nonetheless, the upcoming G-7 summit is still a valuable and promising diplomatic format. First, it brings together many of the world's leading democracies. If the liberal, rules-based international order is to survive and thrive, this collection of advanced democracies will need to play a prominent role. Trump seems determined to bring this order down, but the summit offers a chance for America's prized allies to talk him out of that, or at least limit the damage done.
Second, the G-7 is small and informal, enabling it to foster sustained dialogue and build consensus. The G-7 in important respects resembles the 19th century Concert of Europe, a steering group of major powers that had no charter or formalized procedures, but relied on ad hoc consultation and coordination to preserve great-power peace over decades.
At a time when geopolitical division hamstrings large and formal bodies like the U.N. and World Trade Organization, small and informal contact groups are becoming the diplomatic vehicles of choice. Although a clutch of other countries—including Brazil, India, and Ukraine —are expected to attend the G-7 as guests, the format lends itself to intimate and constructive conversation. When it comes to getting things done, small is beautiful.
The world's wealthiest democracies are not alone in turning to bespoke and informal groupings to conduct diplomacy. Indeed, China and Russia have been leading the effort to form steering groups, such as the BRICS, to serve as counterweights to the G-7 and other bodies dominated by the West. The BRICS includes not just autocracies like China and Russia, but also developing democracies like Brazil, India, and South Africa.
The G-7 and BRICS are suspicious of each other, in a way that splits the major powers into competing diplomatic camps. Yet such division is a huge problem in an interdependent world that faces collective challenges—including climate change, nuclear proliferation, pandemics, and the threats posed by AI. The G-20—which includes democracies and autocracies as well as developed and developing economies from all parts of the world—exhibits the diversity that is needed. But it is also too big and bulky, and its summits produce only anodyne communiques.
So what should come next?
The way forward is more bespoke groupings like the G-7 that focus on specific challenges. One could focus on ending the war in Ukraine; a second on ending the current war in the Middle East; a third on tackling climate change; and a fourth on the growing threat posed by unregulated AI. Such concerts should include democracies and non-democracies alike, bridging, rather than deeping, ideological and geopolitical divides.
These bespoke groupings would not supplant the U.N. and other international bodies. They would backstop them by providing a forum for a sustained dialogue that is hard to come by in big and bureaucratic institutions. And they would tee up decisions that would be implemented in more official settings.
It is precisely this function that the G-7 summit should aim to fulfill. At the top of the agenda will be Ukraine and trade. If Trump is to succeed in his effort to end the war in Ukraine, he will need to confront Vladimir Putin with tighter economic sanctions and more weapons for Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky is hoping for a meeting with Trump in Kananaskis, a conversation that can help set the stage for a successful NATO summit in The Hague later this month, where the big item on the agenda is defense spending.
On trade, the world is teetering on the edge of a precipice. A 90-day pause on Trump's sweeping 'reciprocal' tariffs ends on July 8, and some 17 nations are still reportedly in trade talks. The summit will give G-7 members—who still account for more than half of global GDP—an opportunity to get Trump to back away from the ledge.
The world is at a dangerous inflection point as the demand for global governance increasingly outstrips its supply. The U.N. and other existing institutions have an important role to play—but they are not enough on their own. They need to be complemented by a system of concerts aimed at facilitating compromise, cooperation, and collective action.
The G7 is one of those. Let's hope more of them follow.