China, Russia, G20 Foreign Ministers Confer on Energy, Food Crises; UN Estimates 2.3 Billion Now Food Insecure

July 7—Today’s headline grabber was Boris Johnson’s press conference at No. 10 Downing Street to finally announce his exit. He has resigned as Conservative Party Chairman; and will have to be booted out as Prime Minister, since he wants to stay on until one is chosen. Good riddance.

However, no one is deluded to think that there is an upstanding alternative waiting in the wings. Despite critical elements of sanity in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the Trans-Atlantic, there is an overall crisis of depravity throughout government ranks. Hence we face the multiple crises of economic breakdown, cultural collapse, and the threat of nuclear war.

In this context, the Schiller Institute’s initiative for collaboration towards creating a new international economic and security architecture, based on science and morality, can result in the miracle effect we urgently need.

Today at the Group of 20 meeting of foreign ministers in Indonesia, the representatives of China, Russia, India, and other nations, had multiple bilateral meetings addressing how to collaborate on energy, food, and other challenges, the basis for a development approach to the future. The Bali Summit continues tomorrow.

This evening Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met, to map out concrete collaboration. Wang also met with his counterpart, Dr. S. Jaishankar of India, the country hosting the G20 next year, and they had important discussions on their border dispute as well as on broader issues of mutual concern. Wang’s schedule includes additional meetings with more than ten G20 member nations, including the U.S., Germany, Spain, and Saudi Arabia.

In line with the G20 concern to address the food and energy crises, in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday provided a positive perspective on world supplies of wheat—the food grain traded in the greatest volume internationally. The Kremlin published the transcript of Putin’s review with the director of the state-affiliated United Grain Company, of its operations to handle the bumper Russian wheat crop now being harvested, to carry out bilateral trade deals with friendly countries, to set prices not based on the Western speculative marketing centers of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange nor the International Futures Market in France, to establish national Russian stockpiles of grain and sugar, to stabilize supplies and infrastructure, and to provide for international humanitarian relief. All these points go against the WTO rules-based order serving London and Wall Street. But Russia’s new, American System-style measures will serve both Russia and food-needy nations. In late June, Putin announced similar, deliberate nation-serving measures on hydrocarbons and minerals.

What is the Global NATO crowd doing among the foreign ministers at the G20 in Bali right now? UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss had to mount her broom and fly back early to London, to lobby to be BoJo’s successor, trying to beat out other unsavory contenders.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on hand. The State Department July 5 briefing on the G20 said that he will urge G20 countries to “hold Russia accountable” for the world food crisis and will demand that they support UN efforts to open the sea lanes for Ukraine grain—in other words, stick with the Big Narrative on Russian aggression as the cause of all ills. When Blinken meets with Wang Yi, the State Department said, he will convey what the U.S. “expects” from China, regarding the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and other matters.

Today’s Global Times got it right about Blinken and the U.S. on this. The article stated that the G20 “is neither an exclusive club of the West, nor a platform possessed by the U.S.. A majority of countries across the world did not join the West-led sanctions against Russia, and the G20 is composed of many developing countries that don’t dance to the U.S.’s tune.” Unlike the G7, it continues, the G20 represents emerging powers “that seek solutions to challenges such as economic turbulence and food crises, rather than divide the world by creating more geopolitical conflicts.”

This is our opportunity and responsibility. Let us get out the leadership ideas—the policies and methodology so long and thoroughly put forward by statesman-economist Lyndon LaRouche—sorely needed to end the crises and assure the future. Solutions are urgent.

On July 6, the UN issued its annual hunger report, stating that “around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021—350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the pandemic.”