After the Second World War, the capitalist powers of the West formed a strong alliance under the leadership of the United States. Washington concluded a number of agreements to consolidate economic, political and military hegemony and set up a number of organizations, including NATO, the European Economic Community and Bretton Woods. Two important decisions were taken in the latter agreements.

On the one hand, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the origin of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, is created. United States regulated the global financial economy and promoted the removal of barriers to the free market. Another step along that road was the signing of the General Agreement on Border Taxes and Trade (GATT) in 1947, which enabled the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.

While the free market favored the developed and strong economy of the United States, the war became a disaster for countries experiencing strong post-war or poverty and underdevelopment. That’s why Cordell Hull, who for eleven years was secretary of state for EE.UU, threatened countries that didn’t want to open their markets by telling them that “if goods can’t cross borders, soldiers will.”

Another of the most important decisions taken in the Bretton Woods Conventions was to take the dollar as a single reference to ensure the stability of the monetary system. According to estimates at the time, the United States had between 60 and 80 per cent of world gold reserves, so the dollar would bind to gold, imposing what is known as the gold standard: the gold ship would cost $35.

U.S. hegemony began to erode

In the coming decades, the national and social liberation struggles of many countries of the world advanced markedly, questioning the Western hegemony. At the same time, America’s hegemony among its allies began to erode. In 1948, American participation in the “free world” trade increased from 23.3% to 13.5% in 1970. Meanwhile, exports from Western Europe to the US grew four times more than exports from the US to Western Europe.

In 1971, the United States suffered for the first time in the twentieth century a trade deficit with Vietnam as it was engaged in an expensive war. The countries of Western Europe started buying frames, and France and the United Kingdom asked Washington to make the gold they had in their currencies. As a result, the United States took a unilateral decision in 1971 to end the gold standard agreed at Bretton Woods to regain power and economic control. In the financial and speculative world, a big door opened: fiat money. From then on, the only shell that guaranteed the value of the dollar was its use in the trade in raw materials and, above all, of the world’s oil. For this to be the case, it was essential that the United States control the exploitation of raw materials and markets, and for this the army and its politico-military hegemony have been indispensable.

In 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries decided not to sell oil to the countries that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur war, mainly to the West, with the crisis. In the midst of this precarious economic situation, in 1973 the finance ministers of EE.UU, Japan, West Germany, the United Kingdom and France met at the request of US Treasury Secretary George Schulz to agree on a common economic strategy. Two years later, in 1975, a second meeting was held in France with the participation of Italy in Rambouillet. At the third meeting, held in Puerto Rico in 1977, Canada also participated, with the formal birth of the G7, a club of the seven richest countries in the West. The main objective of the G7 is to develop consensual diagnoses and plans of action on international politics and economy, disseminating neoliberal and imperialist recipes in the world to protect and promote the interests of Western countries.

The Sweet Hegemony of America

The last decade of the last century was the sweetest moment of American hegemony. The expansion of neoliberal globalization driven by the G7 did not seem to be over. In the twenty-first century, Western hegemony received a double response. From the south, new processes of national and/or social liberation of the former colonies were launched, especially in Latin America. Sovereign and progressive governments wanted to regain control of their economy, as emerging countries did, by creating the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) or by the birth and development of the Shanghai Associated Labour Association. As the West lost control over some countries, the G7 lost importance and created other structures to continue to influence the world.

In 1999, the G7 held a meeting with other countries to try to control the situation and deal with the economic crisis in Asia. This group, however, did not adopt a stable operating dynamics until 2008. That year, the international financial crisis broke out and the G7 convened a summit in Washington between the richest countries in the world and the growing countries. In total, 19 countries plus the European Union in an undemocratic way of deciding the economic future of the world’s citizens. Most countries had a strong will to push neoliberalism forward.

The G20 meets every year without citizenship to decide the future of people, countries and nature. Despite the contradictory interests between them, in general, it is a question of promoting neoliberalism and feeding an economic system that generates suffering and poverty. However, due to the positions that the West has regained in Latin America and its strong competition with China, it seems that the G7 will again gain prominence by passing the G20 to the background.

Western decadence

The West is in decline, its cultural, political, military and economic hegemony is in decline. China will face the United States in the first part of economic life, and then try to extend its hegemony to the other areas.

Among the weaknesses China has is the shortage of the raw materials it needs to develop and the complicated exit to the sea. To deal with these problems, it has launched the gigantic Silk Road project to sell its products and get raw materials in a comfortable way. Moreover, China is already the first country in the world to measure Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in terms of purchasing power, and all forecasts indicate that it is a matter of a few years to win nominal GDP. Of the top 50 ranking startup companies worth over $1 billion in technology, 26 are Chinese, 16 American and none European. If we look in the Spanish state at what Amazon's best-selling mobile phones are, we'll see that they're the first 30 Chinese around the world. Nevertheless, Chinese companies go far ahead with mobile phones and G5 technology, which are widespread. That is why the United States has decided to put an end to the free market. Now, when the rival is strong and winning the party, he has started a trade war with tariffs or has harassed Chinese companies as in the case of Huawei.

The United States remains strong

In any case, the United States remains strong because it has three interrelated elements: a relatively large (declining) commodity control, the dollar and the strongest army. That is one of the symbolic functions of the Biarritz G7 summit, to remind the world who the sheriff and his collaborators are. They want to sell the illusion of those who run politics and the international economy, as well as to despise the value of the agreement that Italy has reached with China. It is that Washington has not been able to curb the betrayal of one of the G7 members or to curb the desire of the Chinese strategy to weaken the dollar. Beyond the symbolic games of the Biarritz Summit, it will be more important to see in the coming months the strategy of decay that will be organised by the United States and the West. The rate of decline can slow down or accelerate, but it doesn't turn back. The problem is that as the process accelerates, geopolitical conflicts will intensify. The West is a wounded animal that explains its belligerence and aggressiveness, but unfortunately it can still dispel much more pain in the world if it does not manage its decay well.

Calls against the G7 summit

G7 platform NO

It is a platform made up of numerous associations, popular movements, trade unions and political movements in the Basque Country and the French state. Between 19 and 24 August, Hendaia, Urruña and Irun will host the Village of Alternatives and the counter-summit of the city.

• A19 and 20: open the camping area and host the reception. In the afternoon animations.
• Days A21, 22 and 23: About 80 talks, conferences, debates and workshops in Irun and Hendaya.
• A24: demonstration in Hendaia at 11:30 in two columns.
• 25N: Between 12:00 and 16:00, concentration against the ban on
demonstration. Angelu, Baiona and Biarritz in seven areas. The intention is to complete the area of Arco Iris, where the Pyrenees are located.

G7 Block

It is a group of people who share the principles of the G7 EZ and who complement their proposal. The groups working in the area of disobedience have called for "blocking the G7 and its world". They have focused on the spaces that can symbolize capitalism: “In businesses such as McDonalds restaurants, Biarritz golf or banks, we want to do the most initiatives for three days. We want to open a medium between dogmatic pacifism and the sacralization of disbelief.” They are clear that their weapons are going to be their bodies and they want them to be a precedent for the militancy of the Basque Country. They want to step up the confrontation to drive political change in Euskal Herria.

G7 Fight

They have called for direct action to combat the summit. Previously, initiatives had been taken against the G7 and capitalism. “Our response will be self-defense; it is the need to be against the oppressive system to deal with it with the tools we have at our disposal, building mutual aid and resistance from solidarity. Attacking the banks, damaging the employment of Lanbide/pole, attacking the prisons, making police stations ladies, breaking machines... are means of liberation. Those who are by our side, torturing, jailing, indiscriminately throwing, exploding -- they have no doubt. Not even when we respond to that.”

G7 Yellow Jackets

These Jakas have joined the G7 EZ platform and launched a statewide appeal on 24 August in protest at the disarmament of eta.

(This report has been published in Aktuitate gakoa magazine. If you want a full magazine you can buy it in the Argia market.)