Keeping the world's democracies inside the western tent is a challenge for the G7, experts say

While the topic might not be on the formal, written agenda, or in any of the many programs and sideshows, foreign policy experts say the desire to keep the world's non-aligned democracies firmly within the western tent will be a preoccupation of G7 leaders when they meet at the end of this week.

India and Brazil are among the countries invited to observe this year's annual summit of the leading advanced democratic economies in Hiroshima, Japan.

Both of those nations are members of the BRICS group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The BRICS group has been positioning itself as a potential alternative — even a rival — to the almost 50-year-old G7 group (the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan).

Former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson said the challenge for leaders at this summit and in the coming year will be to "consolidate the democracies" against rising authoritarianism at a time when emerging economies in the southern hemisphere don't want to declare allegiance.

Brazil, he said, is worth watching because "their biggest trading partner right now is China and they want to remain very much an independent voice, a leader within the global south."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leaves Monday for the summit. He'll be making a bilateral visit to South Korea ahead of the G7 gathering.

Canada has an important role to play in engaging with countries like India that have kept up relations and trade with Russia, despite the West's determination to punish Moscow for invading Ukraine, said Roland Paris, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa.

"I think the [G7 leaders'] hope is that those major emerging countries will move toward greater isolation of Russia, or at the very least not support Russia," said Paris, who advised Trudeau on foreign policy early in the current government's tenure.

"I think that there's a simultaneous attempt here to both assert a strong position among the core G7 countries on Russia and China while also reaching out to countries like India and Brazil to try to keep them inside the tent ... to persuade them to the greatest degree possible to support these strategic goals."

Paris said the challenge for western leaders is to draw "large emerging countries of the global south into the discourse about Russia and China instead of excluding them.

"Because there is, in fact, a competition taking place right now, between Russia and China on one side and the non-geographic West on the other, to try to win over these [emerging economies]."

Gordon Houlden, director emeritus of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, said he hopes Trudeau secures a bilateral meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the G7 sidelines to press the G7 case with a fellow Commonwealth nation.

Expectations for that meeting should be modest, he said.

"India is not going to be pried away from Russia," said Houlden, a former diplomat. He noted that Moscow is an "arms supplier, energy supplier [and] longstanding friend" of India.