G-20 Sets the Stage for COP26

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: World leaders gather in Rome for the G-20 summit, Britain summons French ambassador amid Brexit fishing dispute, and Fumio Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party faces a tight election race for Japan’s lower house.

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This weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden joins leaders from countries accounting for 80 percent of the global economy in Rome for the G-20 summit, just before the crucial United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, commonly referred to as COP26.

Although the G-20 summit will have one eye on COP26, there is still plenty on the group’s plate. G-20 leaders are expected to endorse a 15 percent global minimum corporate tax rate, hold discussions on Iran, and seek to iron out supply chain issues that have threatened the global economic recovery.

In keeping with the group’s traditional economic focus, the G-20 will likely extend a program that suspends the debt payments of the world’s poorest countries. The Debt Service Suspension Initiative has already been extended to the end of 2021, but considering the uneven recovery ahead it’s possible the initiative will remain in place for another year.

Giving back? G-20 leaders will talk through ways to hasten the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Thursday, the World Health Organization and other aid groups called on the wealthy nations to fund a $23.4 billion effort to improve access to tests, vaccines, and therapeutic drugs in poorer countries. Rights groups have highlighted the yawning gap in vaccination rates: 63 percent of residents in G-20 countries have received a vaccine, while only 10 percent of those in low- and lower-middle-income nations can say the same.

That theme of justice is closely linked to COP26, as G-20 leaders must also reckon with a shortfall in the annual $100 billion promised in the Paris climate accord to poorer countries to help them transition to cleaner energy. Just $80 billion was transferred in 2020, according to a report released on Monday, while the full $100 billion figure is unlikely to be reached until 2023.

One-on-ones. Before the first summit kicks off, Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, the first time the two leaders have met in person since a diplomatic rift emerged when, as the French see it, the United States swiped a multibillion-dollar Australian submarine contract from under French noses.

In a sign that France is not yet ready to bury the hatchet, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will continue the damage control during a visit to Paris in November.

Biden will also say farewell to one German chancellor, while saying hello to the next one. In a spirit of continuity, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be bringing her presumptive successor, Olaf Scholz, along for her final one-on-one with the U.S. president.

Build back bust? With Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attending the G-20 summit virtually, Biden has a clear run to pursue the kinds of personal-level diplomacy that he appears to favor. Whether other nations will take him seriously depends on events back in Washington, where lawmakers are still split on whether to back a pared-back spending plan that includes more than $500 billion in new funding for the climate initiatives crucial to U.S. credibility on its own ambitious net-zero pledges.

France-U.K. tensions. Catherine Colonna, the French ambassador to the United Kingdom, will hold talks today with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss after Truss summoned Colonna to explain “disappointing and disproportionate threats” in a post-Brexit fishing rights dispute between the two countries. Tensions have risen in recent days after France seized a British trawler, claiming it didn’t have a proper license to fish in French waters.

The move has been part of a tit-for-tat battle: British authorities recently denied fishing licenses to French boats near the island of Jersey, a move that has prompted French threats to cut electricity to the island and consider blocking British ships from some French ports. 

Ethiopia’s air war. The death toll from Ethiopia’s war against Tigray People’s Liberation Front forces increased on Thursday after a government airstrike killed 10 people in Tigray’s capital, Mekele. Amid a communications blackout, both sides have claimed different outcomes from the strike. Ethiopia’s government said the strike hit a TPLF-linked factory, while a TPLF spokesman said the strike hit a civilian residence, with three children among the dead.

Japan’s election. The chances of Fumio Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party maintaining its overall majority in Japan’s House of Representatives grew slimmer as polls indicate a tightening race ahead of Sunday’s vote. A Nikkei poll released on Friday showed close races in 40 percent of Japan’s single-seat districts, and it foreshadowed gains for the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party. Even if Sunday’s results show the ruling party falling below a majority, it is expected to maintain power through the support of its coalition partner, Komeito.

Sudan’s coup. Sudan’s coup leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Thursday said that military officials were in talks with Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok to form a new government just days after they dissolved the previous one. “We told him that we cleaned the stage for you … he is free to form the government, we will not intervene in the government formation, anyone he will bring, we will not intervene at all,” Burhan said.

The announcement came as Biden on Thursday added his voice to international calls for a civilian-led political transition and as Sudanese civilians plan a “march of millions” on Saturday to protest the coup.

A South Korean university professor has come under fire for delivering a lecture while taking a bath. The educational innovation was revealed inadvertently during an audio-only remote class when the professor accidentally turned his camera on. “It was an utter shock. I came in for a lecture, not for a hot bath. The professor made no comment on the incident and went on with the class as if nothing had happened. But we kept hearing the water splash,” one student told the broadcaster SBS.

The male professor, whose name has not been publicly revealed, tried to excuse the incident to students, saying he was suffering a fever from his second coronavirus vaccine dose.

Amid reports from students that it’s not the first time they have heard him deliver a lecture with a splash soundtrack, the professor has told university administrators he had never before mixed bathing with teaching.