The herald of a new world order

Representatives of the world's most important industrialised and emerging states (G20) are to meet on Saturday for a financial summit in Washington. According to the daily Trouw the meeting ushers in a new world order in which non-Western countries like China will play a greater role: "The G20 seems more a reflection of the new economic and political balance of power in the world than an enlarged G8. Important, too, is that unlike the G8 it is not an exclusive Western club. ... Too often we forget that the entire world order is a Western creation. International law, institutions like the UN, the WHO and the OECD as well as the majority of international treaties are Western initiatives that according to non-Western countries do not always serve their interests. The financial crisis offers these countries a golden opportunity to reform the current world order. And this will be to the detriment of us, the Western states. It will lead to new tensions between states. But new dependencies can also have a stabilising effect. ... The upcoming G20 Summit could be the herald of a new inter-polar world."

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