Gevorg Mirzayan, a prolific columnist, Middle East expert and a professor at Russia's Financial University, expectedly panned the December 10-12, 2021, Liverpool meeting of the G7 Foreign Ministers for its irresponsibility and irrelevance. Even when engaging in posturing over who could be more anti-Russian, the foreign ministers could not come up with concrete suggestions for implementing their avowed if mistaken policy. If Mirzayan had ended there his opinion piece would resemble the line enunciated by countless other Kremlin surrogates. The dearth of leadership afflicts not only the G7 from which Russia has been excluded but also the BRICS and the UN Security Council, where Russia has some clout. Given the inability of today's leaders to make real and pragmatic decisions, the world will descend into regionalism or 'an ungovernable spiral of crises and regional conflicts.' In other words, Mirzayan does not take satisfaction from what he perceives as the bankruptcy of Western and other leadership, because this deprives Russia of serious interlocutors, who can credibly serve as a global board of directors together with Russia.
Mirzayan's analysis follows below:[1]
G7 foreign ministers Liverpool Summit (Source: Hromadske.ua)
"The Chinese once called the G7 meetings 'the 'selfie summit.' Naturally, many in the West would disagree with this thesis. Experts and journalists there perceive the G7 as, if not the global government, then at least the global board of directors. This is the body that leads our world to a great and bright future. However, as the Gospel reads, ' Ye shall know them by their fruits.' The G7 has no fruit. Zero.
"On December 11 and 12 the foreign ministers of the G7 member-states met again in Liverpool. Seemingly, they should've been discussing the fight against the coronavirus, cooperation in global vaccination, post pandemic economic reconstruction, the European energy crisis, and overcoming ideological differences between the great powers. Instead, however, the G7 summit deliberated on how to contain China and, most importantly, Russia.
"If one were to look at the Western media headlines, the impression arises that the leaders of the G7 member-states have staged a competition over who will speak out more toughly on the 'inadmissibility of Russian aggression towards Ukraine.' And not only tougher, but in so doing they competed who'll be more irrelevant on the specific measures to be introduced against Russia (because it will be decided not by the 'little 6', but by the US).
"Such a contest is irresponsible not so much because the G7 leaders frighten the world with horror stories, but because that they themselves turn horror stories into reality. This is not that Moscow will tire of senseless accusations and on principle will do things to have the senseless make sense. Kiev, simply, could take advantage of the situation, attack Donbass, and receive the retaliatory entry of Russian troops into the DNR and LNR to protect Russian citizens, and then turn to Ukraine's Western partners, 'Well, you promised to act in case of Russian aggression, didn't you? Here is aggression for you, take action.'
"Error Within An Error
"Had responsible leaders gathered at the G7, the Ukrainian topic would sound differently. First of all, work would have been performed on the mistakes. According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, quite a lot of them [mistakes] have accumulated. These include: 'interference in Ukraine's internal affairs, which has led to a fatal split in the society; manual override of the alternation of power processes, which ended in an anti-constitutional coup [the official Russian description of the 2014 Maidan demonstrations]; unwillingness to assert influence or, to simply put it, to work with Kiev in order to implement the Minsk agreements provisions, which gave hope of moving the internal Ukrainian conflict into a negotiating track; shifting responsibility for the botched job [in Ukraine] to Russia,' said Zakharova.
"The situation around Nord Stream 2 and the European energy sector as a whole is much the same. Instead of admitting their own mistakes in the form of disrupting Russian energy projects, and calling for the fastest possible certification of Nord Stream 2, the parties [to G7] engaged in a sort of ' selfies by anti-Russian hawks.' For example, British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss (the same person, who posed on a tank passing near the Russian-Estonian border) urged to deploy all efforts so that 'free European nations may have an alternative to Russian gas.'
"And this is despite the fact that Britain has done everything possible to ensure that there is no such alternative. After all, it was London (along with Paris) that destroyed the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, turning the Libyan lands into a hotspot of instability and thus drastically reducing the reliability of gas supplies to the EU. It is London that actively supports the foreign policy initiatives of the Turkish president, Recep Erdogan, who is trying to make Turkey a transit country for all gas supplies that serve as alternatives to Russian gas to the EU from the eastern direction. He strives not only to receive transit revenues, but also to use his position for political purposes.
"Mrs. Truss's German colleague, Annalena Baerbock did not lag behind in flight of fantasy. The Foreign Minister of Germany (the country that is the EU's leader, and simultaneously the main beneficiary of Nord Stream 2) talked about refusing to certify the pipeline, in case of a 'Russian attack on Ukraine.' Apparently, these words came as a big surprise to German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who (see the aforementioned arguments about 'EU leader' and 'beneficiary') usually avoided tying the fate of NSP2 to a possible war in Ukraine.
There Are No Replacements
"The list of major topics and the style of their discussion demonstrated that the G7 can no longer be perceived even as a nominal 'board of directors.' At best, it is a hobby club, in which political pensioners gather over a cup of coffee in order to share their fantasies and fears about the reality surrounding them. In this regard two typically Russian questions appear, 'who is to blame?' and 'what is to be done?'
"As to 'who is to blame?' everything is clear. The G7's problems lie not so much in the strength of G7 non-member-states, as in the weakness of its actual members. That weakness is not of the countries themselves, but of their leaders. Today's European states are ruled by extremely indecisive politicians, capable only of managing a functioning system, but who have no 'crisis management' skill (for which European leaders of the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s were famous).
"These politicians brought up in the 1990s and 2000s (in a non-competitive unipolar world, where the US decided everything for everyone), are afraid to show accountability and even more so to take any breakthrough pragmatic decisions. As for the US, the moment came there, when foreign policy desires no longer coincide with political and economic capabilities. For this reason, the US is actively engaged in 'optimization' of foreign policy costs.
"Much more important is the second question: 'what is to be done?' The surrounding world hardly resembles a small ancient Greek polis, where responsible citizens are able to pass decisions via direct democracy. Countries need a governing institution, not a policeman, but a sheriff (who has far more legitimacy in the eyes of the 'citizens'). [Countries need] not a gathering of pensioners, but an effective board of directors, capable of promptly responding to all the challenges that the reality around them poses to the states.
"Unfortunately, such a board of directors doesn't exist and isn't forthcoming. Neither the UN Security Council, nor the BRICS, nor the mythical 'Big 2' (when decisions are passed collegially by China and the US. There was once such a concept) for various reasons are incapable of assuming global responsibility. This means that, in the best-case scenario, the world will regionalize (each part of it will have its own 'board of directors' of local powers), and the worst-case scenario, it will pass into an ungovernable spiral of crises and regional conflicts. And then we will all nostalgically remember the 'selfie summits.'"
Gevorg Mirzayan (Source: Ukraina.ru)
[1] Vz.ru, December 15, 2021.
