In December, India began its yearlong Group of 20 presidency, taking over from Indonesia amid rising geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty.
Surging inflation has raised the specter of a global recession. Supply chains, made more efficient but also more vulnerable by globalization and the digital revolution, are crumbling under the weight of COVID-19-related disruptions and the war in Ukraine, both of which have revealed and deepened the fault lines of the international order.
During the Great Recession of 2008-09, the G20 arguably helped to prevent a worse crisis by persuading the world’s biggest economies to coordinate their fiscal and monetary policies. With the global economy at a critical juncture, following decades of relentless globalization that have made markets increasingly interconnected, the group could once again play this role.