US President Donald Trump tomorrow is to meet other world leaders as the G20 summit opens in Germany, with North Korea’s first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) casting a long shadow over the gathering at the heavily-fortified venue.
The rising global threat posed by Pyongyang is likely to see conflicts over climate and trade take a back seat as regional neighbors China, Japan and South Korea gather with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hamburg.
“Testing an ICBM represents a new escalation of the threat to the US, our allies and partners, the region, and the world,” US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, confirming North Korea now possesses a weapon capable of reaching US territory.
Russia and China condemned Tuesday’s test and the EU might consider additional sanctions.
All eyes will be on Trump, who said North Korea’s goal of possessing an ICBM “won’t happen” and has repeatedly pressed China to rein in its truculent neighbor.
In the most anticipated moment of the G20, Trump is to meet Putin.
The moment they shake hands is sure to see “an Olympian level of macho posturing between these two leaders, who both understand the importance of symbolism and the perception of being tough,” said Derek Chollet, a former Pentagon adviser and National Security Council official now at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Trouble is also brewing at the conference table at a time when the West and Europe are deeply divided, the post-Cold War order is fraying and China and Russia are asserting themselves on the global stage.
“There is a danger that the summit will lead to polarization between the US and other countries” on climate change and other issues, Oxford Analytics economist Adam Slater said.
Trade wars loom as Trump has demanded Germany and China reduce their huge surpluses and threatened other countries with punitive measures in battles over steel, natural gas and hormone-treated beef.
The year’s gathering of the G20 big industrialized and emerging economies, the biggest diplomatic event outside the UN, would also provide a stage for other world leaders muscling for power and regional influence.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a time when both are worried about North Korea.
Also looming over the summit is to be the bloody conflict in Syria and the frozen one in Ukraine — both involving Russia — as well as the struggle for Middle East dominance between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Then there is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose crackdown on alleged coup plotters, civic society and Kurds after a putsch attempt last year has poisoned relations with Germany.
Trump, before the summit, is to meet leaders from ex-communist eastern European nations, including authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — threatening to deepen a new East-West split in the EU, which is facing Brexit and still recovering from divisions over the debt crisis.
The US president today is to meet the summit host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the longest-serving leader and, apart from British Prime Minister Theresa May, the only woman in the club.
Merkel, hailed by some as the “new leader of the free world,” advocates an internationalist approach to global issues — but her G20 motto, “shaping an interconnected world,” contrasts sharply with Trump’s go-it-alone approach.
Merkel — a “green” energy champion who has allowed more than 1 million mostly Muslim refugees into Germany since 2015 — last week said that “the differences are obvious and it would be dishonest to try to cover that up. That I won’t do.”
In Hamburg, she must walk a fine line between trying to build a 19-to-1 front against Trump on key issues and preventing even further damage to transatlantic ties, while seeking common ground for at least a watered-down G20 final communique.
About 20,000 police are to guard the leaders against protesters who have greeted them with the combative slogan “G20 — welcome to Hell.”
Up to 100,000 protesters are expected, a diverse group of environmentalists, peace and anti-poverty activists, united in the belief that the global elite is failing to solve the pressing global problems.
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