Editor,

REFERENCE IS made to Kenneth Agutamba’s article, "Is West courting China after divorcing Russia?” published in The New Times on March 29.

As an entity, the G8 has always looked like a strained grouping in search of a rational basis. It is as if Russia was only admitted to this exclusive, but hardly meaningful, Western club as both a cheap, costless reward for Moscow’s acquiescence in the dismantling of its wider Eastern European and even core Soviet Union empires without making waves, and also with a view to keeping Russia amenable to Washington’s and Western geopolitical plans.

Clearly, a Russia that no longer agrees to play geopolitics in accordance to Uncle Sam’s rules no longer has a place in that club in which it was always only a guest on probation.

The G20 is equally strained as a club. For instance, although it is supposed to comprise the world’s 20 biggest economies, South Africa, which is a member of the club, is nowhere among the world’s top 30 economies.

It is there solely as the token African country, but strictly for its own account rather than as a representative of the continent.

Thank God, therefore, it remains no more than the usual talking shop producing the standard never-implemented communiqués of the great and good.

Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda