On January 12, 2017, The Gaidar Forum in Russia featured as its plenary session a discussion on Russia, the G20, and the global economy in a changing world. Featuring senior experts and officials, the panel focused on the major potential risks to and drivers of global economic growth over the next few years and the role of the G20 in steering the global economy.

Vladamir Mau moderated the panel discussion between Kevin Rudd, ASPI President and former Prime Minister of Australia, Mark Belka, former Prime Minister of Poland, David Lipton, the First Deputy Managing Director at the International Monetary Fund, Martin Wolf of The Financial Times, and Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever Group. The session concluded with an address by Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.

In his remarks, Rudd discussed the challenges facing the international system over the next five years. “We are looking at much more of a set of downside risks than we are looking at upside opportunities,” he argued. He pointed to the trajectory of U.S. relations with China and Russia as problematic and expressed concern “about the ability of national institutions to respond to the impulse towards turning inwards, and the ability to strike a new social contract domestically which will arrest that possibility.”

Rudd presented the G20 as a critical mechanism for global cooperation that successfully prevented the global financial crisis from becoming a global depression, but has been unable to chart a path for future sustainable growth. According to Rudd, such cooperation will be critical if the world wants to weather the profound changes in the current global order. (1 hour, 55 min., 52 sec.)