G7 summit and Korea

By Andrew Hammond

The 2016 G7 leadership meeting, which starts Thursday in Japan, comes at a moment of heightened international concern about the global economy, with significant downside risks on the horizon, including the UK's EU referendum next month. While the summit thus has a sizeable economic agenda, geopolitical issues will also be top of mind from North Korea, the South China Sea, Ukraine, and the Middle East.

For the third year running, it will be only the G7 (Japan, United States, Canada, Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy) rather than the G8 (which includes Russia) which meets. Russia joined the summits from 1997 to 2013, but following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Moscow has been told it can only rejoin if "it changes course and an environment is once again created in which it is possible for the G8 to hold reasonable discussions".

The prominence of geopolitical issues in the Japan-hosted meeting underlines the G7's often under-appreciated importance as an international security lynchpin. This is despite the fact that the group was originally conceived in the 1970s to monitor developments in the world economy and assess macroeconomic policies.

With Japan hosting this year's summit, multiple Asian-centric geopolitical issues, including North Korea and maritime security in the South China Sea and will be discussed, not just in the G7 but also in a bilateral US-Japan Summit between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. On the North Korean front, the G7 will seek to send a message of defiance to the Pyongyang regime which conducted its fourth nuclear weapon test in January.

Earlier this month, Admiral Harry Harris, Head of the US Pacific Command, asserted that no threat in the region is "more dangerous than North Korea" and that Pyongyang is on a quest to develop nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that could strike, inter-continentally, as far as the United States. The G7 is expected to discuss potential new sanctions against the country, and doubling down on US cooperation with key countries in the region, especially Japan and South Korea, including plans for stronger trilateral information sharing arrangements, and the possibility of deploying a US THAAD missile defence system on the peninsula.

Maritime security in Asia will also be raised, not least in the South China Sea which is believed to have large deposits of oil and gas, and where it is estimated that over 5 trillion dollars of sea-borne trade passes each year. G7 foreign ministers have warned of "any intimidating coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions" in both the South and East China Seas given the territorial disputes over several archipelagos there involving countries such as China, Vietnam (where Obama will visit after the G7), Malaysia and the Philippines.

China, which claims much of the South China Sea, is building islands on reefs to bolster its claims, and has strongly condemned the G7's consideration of this issue. It asserts that the group should focus instead on its founding mandate of global economic cooperation against the backdrop of sub-par performance of the international economy.

The Middle East will also be a key area of G7 dialogue from Iran, to Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Ahead of the summit, Japan has pledged 6 billion dollars in aid between 2016 and 2018 to help tackle violent extremism and bring greater stability to the region, especially in the context of the ongoing migrant crisis which will be a top discussion item for European leaders.

New measures to tackle terrorism financing will also be finalised following increasing use by extremist groups, including Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), of a broader range of financing methods to raise and transfer money. These span the use of digital or virtual currencies, through to the trading of sometimes very expensive antiquities.

This discussion will build on agreement amongst G7 finance ministers on May 21 of an "action plan" which includes increased exchanges of information on financial intelligence, reducing the level of cross-border transactions subject to disclosure, and collaboration on targeted sanctions for financial networks of outlawed groups.

Ukraine also remains high on the G7 agenda. In recent years, the body has played a significant orchestration role in the West's response to the crisis, and the leaders will use the summit to reiterate their support for the Kiev government.

The G7's involvement in this multitude of geopolitical dialogues, from Asia to the Middle East and Europe, has met with some criticism, as the comments from Beijing about the South China Sea indicate. It is sometimes asserted, for instance, that the G7 lacks the legitimacy of the UN, and/or is a historical artefact given the rise of new powers, including China and India.

However, it is not the case that the international security role of the G7 is a new one. An early example of the lynchpin function the body has played here was in the 1970s and 1980s when it helped coordinate Western strategy towards the then-Soviet Union.

Moreover, following the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the then-G8 (including Russia) assumed a key role in the US-led ‘campaign against terrorism'. This began with coordinated activities helping to tackle sources of terrorism finance and, later, a ‘Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction'.

Another key security role came over Kosovo in 1999. Following unsuccessful efforts to resolve the crisis in the UN Security Council, compromise was reached between the West and Russia in the G8. Foreign ministers then drew up a resolution that was agreed at the UN.

Taken overall, the G7 summit will have a significant geopolitical dialogue, despite criticism of its actions in this area. The body's longstanding track record as a security actor underlines this role is not only likely to continue but could yet grow in significance.

Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS (the Centre for International Affairs, Diplomacy and Strategy) at the London School of Economics, and a former U.K. government special adviser.