Anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and environmental defense movements have often succeeded in transforming global politics and economics. Too often, however, technocratic and triumphalist narratives from the Global North obscure this reality.
Today, however, resistance to colonization and environmental destruction are converging into a powerful movement that may well derail Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s hopes to harmonize global policies around capitalism/colonialism as-usual among the Group of Seven (G-7). The annual summit of the US, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Canada and Japan is taking place at from June 15-17.
Last week, Carney announced his G-7 priorities that, decoded, mean reinforcing military alliances, developing monopolies over critical minerals and AI to promote unfettered ‘growth’, and mobilizing private capital for major infrastructure projects. These priorities, in effect, will only exacerbate environmental extractivism and exploitation of marginalized populations in both the Global South and North.
Carney’s agenda of promoting capitalist growth might, in other circumstances, been enough to have the G-7 leaders, including Donald Trump, agree on a joint statement. This time, however, anti-apartheid and anti-genocide efforts around Palestine, resistance to the abridgment of civil liberties in the United States, and to human-made environmental disasters have caused major fissures in the capitalist system that may widen during the G-7.
Obscured Histories of Resistance
Conventional accounts of the G-7 trace its origins to the collapse of fixed exchange rates and the oil crisis in the early 1970s. It is often assumed that these events prompted the lead capitalist states to meet informally and the formation of the G-7 in 1975.
What this account conceals, however, is how Vietnamese resistance to the American war at the time, and the embargo on oil exports by OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) to support Palestine were primary factors that led to the collapse of fixed exchange rates (the Nixon shocks) and the oil crisis. These acts of resistance amounted to acts of decolonization, a process that began much earlier and continues today.
Emerging from the process of decolonization have been major economies including China, India, and Brazil among others. Their importance has been increasingly recognized but now the US is intent on casting China as an enemy. As a result, Carney acknowledges the need to “engage partners beyond the G-7,” but only want to build “coalitions with reliable partners and common values.”
This kind of language reinforces a civilizational discourse that posits the ‘West’ as the repository of progressive values that it wants to share with the lesser countries of the Global South as long as they recognize ‘Western’ leadership.
Carney is thus engaging in the politics of divide and rule – purposefully inviting India, South Africa and Brazil to this year’s G-7 while excluding Russia and China.
Carney’s divide-and-rule tactic will not wash well in the Global South and the Chinese government has criticized the G-7 preparations, saying the G-7 has long adhered to a “Cold-war mentality” and is only provoking conflict and confrontation.
Carney’s G-7 planning seems designed to appease Donald Trump’s imperial agenda to isolate and militarily threaten China. Is Carney baiting China as part of his government’s attempt to negotiate a new trade and security deal with Trump?
The economic ascendancy of the Global South, led by China, only renders the G-7 increasingly irrelevant as the world moves towards a polycentric political and economic system. Whether it can do so while avoiding global war or a nuclear holocaust remains to be seen.
Palestine
Continued protests against Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault against Palestinians finally forced Canada, along with Australia, New Zealand, Norway and the UK to impose limited sanctions against two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
The sanctions were not for the destruction of Gaza, however, but rather for “inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned even these weak measures. Carney can be expected to avoid any discussion of Palestine at the G-7 in order to prevent these minor differences from blowing up.
This may be difficult, however, in light of Israel’s unprovoked bombing of Iran on the eve of the G-7, and the arrival of thousands of Palestine supporters from Tunisia and 50 other countries, including Canada, at the Rafah border crossing in Egypt. The Sumud (“steadfastness”) convoy is demanding the immediate opening of the border to allow humanitarian aid to reach the besieged Palestinians of Gaza.
In refusing to discuss Palestine, the G-7 will only further expose its deep complicity in Israel’s genocide. This is already understood by many in the Global South. Even in Canada, a recent poll shows that close to half of the population now regards Israel’s assault as genocide.
The Environment
For decades, environmental movements in both the Global South and North have pressed for action to halt multiple forms of environmental destruction that have now become an existential threat to the planet.
Down the highway from Kananaskis where G-7 leaders will be meeting is Jasper. The wildfires that burned a large part of this Canadian landmark last year are back, with tens of thousands of people, including many First Nations, forced to leave their towns and villages in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
Even the summit has an evacuation plan, should the wildfires approach Kananaskis. Their proximity to the effects of climate change will not deter G-7 leaders from committing to further capitalist expansion. Jason Hickel, increasingly influential in environmental circles, has concluded, “Ecological breakdown is being driven by the capitalist economic system, and – like capitalism itself – is strongly characterized by colonial dynamics.”
With Trump’s continuing disavowal of climate change, the G-7 will studiously avoid grappling with the environmental issues that threaten the world, further eroding its international credibility.
A Future for the G-7?
The distinguished writer Amitav Ghosh has argued it was “Western military conquests” and “the imperial systems that arose in their wake, that fostered and made possible the rise to dominance of what we now call capitalism … colonialism, genocide and structures of organised violence were the foundations on which industrial modernity was built.”
A G-7 summit that ends with no action on the environment, promotes unfettered capitalist growth, and remains silent on the genocide being committed in Gaza will only exacerbate the contradictions of racial capitalism and hasten the irrelevance of so-called ‘Western’ hegemony.
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