Suicidal Superpower? America Stops Talking to The World
14:21 19.11.2025 (Updated: 18:04 19.11.2025)
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So, the United States are not only not attending the 2025 summit in Johannesburg this weekend. America has also notified G20 members that it will oppose a traditional Leaders’ Declaration at the 2025 summit.
South Africa’s G20 Sous-Sherpa, Ambassador Xolisa Mabhongo, has confirmed that the US has written a letter to this effect. The US says it will not attend the summit over its claims of a white genocide in South Africa, though very few people take is as the true reason for that act of superpower’s resignation from a discussion among the biggest economies of the world.
There are several layers of reaction to the announcement. The first one is been owned by South Africans as the president of G20, and it is more or less predictable. According to the local news agencies, South Africa has shrugged off the US tantrum, assuring global leaders the show will go on even without a delegation from Washington.
Says International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola:"They’re not attending, you can call it whatever – others will call it a boycott, others will call it non-attendance - but the reality is that they are not attending but we’ve focused on the job, we’ve done our job."
Lamola said also that four other heads of state will also give the summit a skip but their countries will still be represented at the foreign ministers' level.
This includes China, Mexico, Argentina and Russia. "We don’t see this as a snub or the undermining of Africa," the minister says, adding that with sufficient consensus, the member states present would be able to agree on a declaration.
All right, but that was about technicalities mostly. How about the future shape of that top-level diplomatic gathering and its future capabilities of managing global affairs?
The Prime Minister Modi will be there, and some writers say that, with Modi attending, India “gains space to shape Global South priorities as the forum faces a pivotal test”. To remind, it was an Indian initiative to accept all of Africa as a full-scale member of G20, and that definitely changes the general landscape. So, the US will only be boycotting itself by staying away from these trends, is that right?
The Russian reaction to these events tends to downplay that one particular episode of international diplomacy and, instead, concentrate on the good question of what the devil is happening to the US as a (former) top global power. And the picture, in the Russian view, is grim.
Says one of editorials of The Expert: the US economic self-sufficiency as a base for making America great again is an idea that “asks for serious effort”.
That nation is not self-sufficient in energy or finance, since it imports part of its oil and a lot of its money. But, in any case, due to America’s behavior, the whole global architecture in military, political, or economic sphere has gone to tatters and is in need of renovation.
Natalia Guseva, Professor of the Moscow Higher School of Economy, is mostly writing about the gains and problems of Russian export, but this time she finds, in the same magazine, a couple of cruel words about the general shape of the world.
She says that the old machinery managing global economy is broken, because that machinery has been made for managing competition within one global system, while what we see now is competition between several different systems.
Yes, G20 was exactly that – one discussion club for managing one global economy. While it’s very hard to say what that club will become now.
If you look at it through the prism of one private corporation making decisions, Guseva goes on, then you see that these corporations are learning to zigzag between various clashing regulatory regimes. In such cases, their choice is in favor of long-term investment projects, where stability is more important than immediate profit margins.
And here I may proudly remind that only a couple of weeks ago I’ve written a column, saying that future without America is already here. That scary idea has been based on a publication in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong).
Its title says it all – “The long goodbye: Southeast Asia adjusts to a post-America trade future”. To remind, that feature describes how Trump’s tariffs are squeezing margins, re-routing supply chains and forcing all kind of Asian companies to wean themselves off the US market. It’s a slow and natural process towards future without America.
And then, of course, there is that all-important question: why do they do it? Why does America cause problems for others, while harming itself? And, of course, there are also many ways to describe the reasons for America’s constant refusals to attend global discussions of the future.
Here we pass the baton to Andrei Kortunov, one of Valdai discussion club’s experts. He says: hey, you look at that crazy shutdown case, that has recently ended. It shows us a lot.
Like, for instance, how about two warring parties, Republicans and Democrats, both being defeated by these six weeks, with one party losing several by-elections, while the other risking a fatal split of moderates against radicals. And that’s not to mention the fact that America is still very far from normalcy, since we are only talking about temporary budget arrangements that will last for less than three months.
And that almost futile exercise, goes on Kortunov, led the nation to losses of about 1 per cent of annual GDP, with ministries and agencies paralyzed and demoralized, police leaving cities and towns to criminals and transport on the brink of overload.
That means, says he, that the American political and social system has reached a brink of solvency. The whole political class of a big nation is losing its common sense and the basic survival instinct. And that threatens not only America, but the rest of the world.
One may easily imagine, in such case, the coming or a future G20 meeting seriously discussing the measures needed to cushion the impact of a total breakdown of one of the two biggest economies of the world.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
