The UK foreign secretary Liz Truss will host a weekend meeting of the G 7 foreign ministers starting on Saturday in a new show of western unity against Russia and China.
A G 7 meeting, held against the backdrop of a potential invasion of Ukraine, tensions in the South China SeaChina Sea and the potential collapse of the Iran nuclear deal, is billed by Truss as a chance to show a united front against malign behaviour including Russian posturing towards Ukraine. Truss will pledge security and economic support in order to defend the frontiers of freedom around the world, a reference to the array of Western infrastructure investment vehicles assembled by the US, EU and the UK in order to offer a rival to the Chinese Belt and Road initiative.
It will give Truss a chance to present herself as a businesslike modern-day Thatcher determined to get the West on the Front Foot a portrait that will put her in good standing with her backbenchers if Boris Johnson is to lose her confidence.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is likely to offer reassurances that Joe Biden did not offer substantive concessions to Russia over the future role of Nato on the Eastern front in his talks with Vladimir Putin this week or the potential ceding of Ukrainian territory. Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, is expected to urge Blinken not to rule out Ukraine's membership in Nato.
Russia on Friday demanded that Nato rescind the commitment to Ukraine and Georgia made at the 2008 Bucharest summit that they could become a member of the alliance.
There is bound to be discussions on how the multiple crises can be dialled down, and whether the west is at risk of fighting on too many fronts at the same time.
France has not joined some G 7 partners in the U.S., UK and Canada in a diplomatic boycott over human rights abuses in China's province of Xinjiang.
The two-day meeting will be the first outing of a multilateral forum for the new German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, co-leader of the Green Party, who is closely watched to see how she intends to apply foreign policy to Russia and China.
She said that if Russia invaded Ukraine : It would be extremely serious, a strategic mistake and there would be severe consequences for Russia and what we are doing this weekend with like-minded allies to spell this out. Truss wanted to work with Baerbock on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany to reduce the dependence on the west on the energy and technology of authoritarian regimes.
She said it was a matter for the courts to decide on the issue of genocide but I am very concerned about the appalling human rights abuses against the Uyghur people in China, and I have said this to the Chinese ambassador. In a fortnight Germany takes over the G 7 from the UK and is not expected to be a long communique, but rather a relatively brief chair statement in deference to the handover.
Foreign ministers from South Korea and Australia, not G 7 member states, will be attending, but plans to bring over all the foreign ministers from the 10 states in the Association of Southeast Nations Asean bloc have been heavily scaled back due to Covid travel restrictions. They will be linked into the G 7 meeting by video on Sunday.
Britain had planned to focus its agenda heavily on the Indo-Pacific, and the threat posed by China, but the massing of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border has required an adjustment on an already packed agenda.
There have been tensions in south-east Asia about the degree to which countries in the region will get sucked into making a choice between the US, China, and Australia, as well as how to approach Aukus, the US, Australia and the UK security pact, which focuses on providing Australia with nuclear-propelled submarines.
The surprise pact, announced in September, and cancelling the previous Australian contract to buy French submarines, has caused uproar in France and it is unlikely that JLe Drian, the French foreign minister, will greet his Australian counterpart, Marise Payne, with huge enthusiasm when they meet for the first time since what France regarded as a great betrayal by Australia.
On his first trip abroad, Aukus will likely be endorsed by Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan's new foreign minister.