The G20 summit is being held in Osaka, Japan with the most pressing global tasks and anxieties on the table for the group of the world's largest economies. We are in an era where advancement and problems coexist. Whether the problems can be seriously tackled depends, to a large extent, on the attitudes of the leaders in Osaka.
Can the global economy bottom out? How can barriers to free trade be removed? Will climate change be truly mitigated? Will more abundant resources be put into poverty alleviation? Is there a hope to relieving tensions in the Middle East? Those are the issues of global common concern. Regrettably, they haven't been effectively responded to as people expect. The underlying reason is that the US, the most powerful country on the planet, is distracted.
Most countries believe that strengthening cooperation is the prerequisite to dealing with various challenges. But the US, as the world's biggest economy with GDP per capita among the top, at this time thinks it has suffered from globalization, accusing almost all partners of profiting at its expense. The international system established under its leadership now has been considered by Washington as tools that erode US interests.
Washington has adopted a non-cooperative attitude toward the major tasks facing human beings. It is interested in flexing its muscle to maximize its own interests. The US withdrew from the Paris Agreement and several international mechanisms, abandoned the Iran nuclear deal, launched a full-scale trade war against China and threatened other major economies with additional tariffs. All these are catastrophic to global governance.
Sticking to its "America first" doctrine is dragging global governance into a quagmire, even causing some turmoil. For instance, the perfidy of the US has placed the Persian Gulf region, whose situation used to be greatly eased, under the cloud of war once again.
The world needs to rein in the US, although it's difficult. For example, when the US acts in an unbridled way, all countries should speak straightforwardly to exert moral pressure on it. The problem is that many countries have misgivings in expressing their opposition to US bullying tactics out of fear for US power, or hope to profit from the US stirring up the global order through opportunism.
In fact, subverting the original interest generation mechanism is equally harmful to the US and will inevitably damage the US' own interests as a superpower.
What Washington is doing now is "populism of the aristocracy." As long as there is enough international pressure on it, US society is likely to reflect.