G-7 meeting will also have significant geopolitical dialogue

THE 2016 G-7 leadership meeting, which starts on Thursday in Japan, comes at a moment of heightened international concern about the global economy, with significant downside risks on the horizon, including the UK's EU referendum next month. While the summit thus has a sizeable economic agenda, geopolitical issues will also be top of mind from North Korea, the South China Sea, Ukraine, and the Middle East.

For the third year running, it will be only the G-7 (Japan, United States, Canada, Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy) rather than the G-8 (which includes Russia) which meets. Russia joined the summits from 1997 to 2013, but following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Moscow has been told it can only rejoin if "it changes course and an environment is once again created in which it is possible for the G-8 to hold reasonable discussions".

The prominence of geopolitical issues in the Japan-hosted meeting underlines the G-7's often underappreciated importance as an international security linchpin. This is despite the fact that the group was originally conceived in the 1970s to monitor developments in the world economy and assess macroeconomic policies.