The Summit Without America

Trump’s G20 boycott handed Narendra Modi an unlikely spotlight while showing that the world’s biggest economies can still act even when Washington sulks.

When the United States absents itself from global diplomacy, the usual assumption is that the world grinds to a halt. The recently concluded twentieth G20 summit in Johannesburg, boycotted by President Donald Trump and the US over allegations that South Africa was persecuting its white Afrikaner minority, offered a rare counterexample. Far from paralysis, the gathering produced an energetic display of geopolitical improvisation. Deals were struck and initiatives were launched. Into the vacuum left by the US, stepped Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who turned the American absence into Indian advantage.

Trump’s boycott had dominated the chatter in the run-up to the summit. For some, it confirmed Washington’s drift into a new era of truculent unilateralism. For others, it presented an opportunity. “We will mark them absent and continue with the business,” Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s foreign minister had remarked, setting a tone of quiet defiance.

Even a request by the Trump administration to stage a ceremonial handover of the G20 presidency from Cyril Ramaphosa to a junior American diplomat was politely declined. If Washington wished to skip the meeting, the signal was clear: the G20 would not rearrange itself around U.S. theatrics.

Coasting Without America

That determination shaped the rhythm of the summit. Ramaphosa opened by breaking precedent, adopting the final declaration at the outset in a diplomatic flourish meant to show unity and momentum. With America absent, emerging powers found space both to deepen cooperation and to push agendas reflecting the concerns of the Global South.

No leader capitalised on this dynamic more deftly than India’s prime minister. Modi arrived in Johannesburg with a clear plan and used the forum to project India as a convening power capable of bridging divides, advancing practical solutions, and amplifying the voice of the developing world. It was the strongest echo yet of India’s ambition, articulated during its 2023 presidency, to transform the G20 from a club of economic heavyweights into a platform for inclusive global governance.

Fruitful Interventions

Modi’s interventions were broad and unusually purposeful. On the artificial intelligence (AI) front, an area where the Trump administration has resisted any move toward international regulation, he urged the creation of a global governance framework to prevent misuse, insisting that AI must be deployed for the global good rather than for narrow geopolitical advantage.

Modi’s stance, in stark variance to the one adopted by Trump, was that technological disruption, if left unregulated, risks entrenching global inequality and destabilising less prepared societies.

On security, Modi focused attention on the insidious frontier of global drug trafficking. His proposal for a ‘G20 Initiative on Countering the Drug-Terror Nexus’ gained notable support, illustrating how synthetic narcotics, long viewed as domestic policing issues, have grown into transnational threats with geopolitical implications.

The PM’s most striking emphasis was on Africa, a continent where India’s ties run deep but which rarely features so prominently in global summits. Building on the legacy of the New Delhi G20, where India championed the African Union’s entry as a full member, Modi cast Africa’s rise as central to the future of global development. He spoke of the need to rethink growth models that have historically deprived large populations of resources and encouraged the over-exploitation of nature, arguing that Africa has been among the worst sufferers of these distortions.

Modi proposed an ambitious skills partnership with the continent, calling for a G20–Africa ‘Skills Multiplier’ that would train one million certified trainers over the next decade through a train-the-trainer model capable of cascading expertise to millions more. He also urged the creation of a Global Traditional Knowledge Repository, inspired by India’s Indian Knowledge Systems programme, to preserve and exchange eco-balanced, sustainable practices maintained by communities worldwide.

These ideas reflected India’s philosophy of ‘Integral Humanism,’ which sees economic progress, environmental stewardship and societal well-being as interlinked rather than competing objectives. For Africa, a continent simultaneously endowed with resources and scarred by historical patterns of exploitation, the appeal of such a holistic development model is evident.

India’s influence extended into the final declaration as well. The strong language condemning terrorism clearly bore the marks of India’s imprint. So too did emphasis on digital public infrastructure, women-led development, disaster resilience, traditional medicine and the responsible governance of emerging technologies. The declaration also echoed India’s call for broader representation in global institutions, including long-pending UN Security Council reforms.

Bilateral diplomacy thrived on the sidelines as Modi held consultations with leaders ranging from the UK and Italy to South Korea and Singapore. Most notably, India, Australia and Canada unveiled the new Australia-Canada-India Technology and Innovation (ACITI) Partnership to strengthen supply chains, accelerate green energy innovation and coordinate AI policy.

All of this unfolded even as the symbolic rituals of global leadership stumbled. When Ramaphosa struck the traditional wooden gavel to close the summit, no American official was present to receive it for the 2026 presidency.

The scene demonstrated that multilateralism need not collapse when America withdraws. In fact, it may encourage others to step up. Modi’s activism, Ramaphosa’s assertiveness and the willingness of middle powers to forge new alliances all point to a slow but discernible redistribution of diplomatic agency. The world may still not be ready to move on without the United States, but it is learning to move on when necessary.

In a century likely to be defined not by a single hegemon but by a constellation of influential states, the real takeaway of the Johannesburg summit is that global cooperation is no longer a function of American attendance.