The third G-20 summit begins on Thursday amidst a general sense of relief about the state of the global economy. The group will take credit for having appreciated the severity of the crisis last November and evoking very strong policy responses from its member countries, which have clearly proved to be effective. Having notched up this success, the agenda for the Pittsburgh summit will reflect the group’s rising ambitions to address significant long-term global issues like trade and climate change. It is tempting to see the G-20 as a forum that will help to break through the deadlocks that plague these issues in the more technically driven forums whey they are being discussed. Twenty world leaders may well find, in a couple of days of conversations, enough common ground to provide strong direction to negotiators from member-countries as they engage in subsequent rounds of talks on both issues. From this perspective, the global benefits accruing from an active and effective dialogue among leaders in the G-20 can be significant, even if the G-7/G-8 achieved precious little over the last three decades.
But it is important, particularly from the viewpoint of India and the other emerging economies in the group, not to get swept away by the moment. As compact a group as the G-20 is, its membership reflects the extremes of the spectrum of views on both trade and climate change issues. The complexity of the issues and the need to analyse the consequences of a range of negotiating positions on various domestic stakeholders make it imperative that the process of dialogue between technically proficient representatives of various countries provide the foundation for any agreement. These could certainly be helped by direction and signals emanating from G-20 summits. But they could also be pushed in directions that are not exactly in the best interests of at least some member countries. The compulsion to be seen as having arrived at a consensus is very strong in such relatively small groups. Leaders from countries such as India, which are battling against the imposition of a US and European agenda on both trade and climate change, run the risk of weakening their positions in these negotiations by appearing to be part of a broad consensus in the G-20. The fact remains that the US and Europe carry significant clout in the forum and will not hesitate to combine forces, notwithstanding their visible differences on issues relating to financial regulation. Especially after the fiasco of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he seems to have got carried away by the moment, Manmohan Singh needs to go to Pittsburgh with a clear sense of the pressures, both overt and subtle, that he and others will face to align their positions with an apparent G-20 consensus. It must also be recognised that the government needs to buttress its negotiating positions in other, larger forums in which any agreements will actually be worked out. This involves both technical capability and co-ordination with other countries in similar positions. In such a high-stakes game, you can never have too many experts or too many friends.