The financial crisis of 2008—and the breathtaking rapidity with which it has spread—has brought home how truly interconnected world economies and markets have become. It has also underscored the need for the world’s economic policy makers to establish better ways of working together across borders. An international wave of protectionism and financial disorder exacerbated the Great Depression and led to the (belated) creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Some 30 years later, in 1975, formalized international cooperation had its origins at meetings in Rambouillet, France, in response to the stagflation and high oil prices that plagued many countries in the mid-1970s. These formed the basis of a new global economic steering committee, the Group of Seven (G-7), led by the industrial nations.

We are now in a very different era. The G-7 still performs a vital role in coordinating policies among the major industrialized nations. But its composition does not reflect the dramatic shift in global economic and political power that has taken place over the past three decades. The growing economic clout of Brazil, China, India, and Russia, as well as some major oil producers, has created unprecedented financial and commercial multipolarity. Many of these emerging economies are not only large markets but also global financial powers. International forums that ignore or underweight these nations and other important emerging economies will be unequal to a growing number of global problems, from financial crises to environmental cooperation to relaunching global trade negotiations.

The Group of 20 (G-20), which includes the most prominent emerging nations as well as the largest developing countries, is the organization that best fits this new economic role. The goal now should be to make the G-20 an important fixture in the architecture of international policy coordination in the 21st century. All G-20 nations see it as in their interest to participate and are eager to play a meaningful role in shaping the future of the international economy. The crisis has crystallized two factors that will now make including the large emerging economies both necessary and possible.

• First, the emerging economies have been adversely affected. The notion that they were “decoupled” from the industrialized economies, as many had theorized, has been exposed as a myth. These countries realize that they can no longer be mere bystanders, watching as others manage the international financial and economic system. Most depend heavily on global markets; some require large amounts of foreign credit; others have accumulated huge foreign currency reserves; and several have big investments in other economies. They are now major stakeholders in the global economic system and thus, as the current crisis painfully demonstrates, can be suddenly and adversely affected by turmoil elsewhere in the world.

• Second, it has brought home to the industrialized nations that, while they will continue to play the central roles in the international economy, they will also need to work with emerging economies to ensure global stability and their own prosperity. If they are to seek the help of emerging economies in running the system, they must give them a greater voice and institutional role in it.

Already, the world is moving toward greater cooperation. An extraordinary number of examples of collective action have sprung from the present crisis. In early October, the central banks of Canada, China, the eurozone, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States announced a coordinated interest rate cut. At the end of October, the Federal Reserve extended swap lines to the central banks of Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, and South Korea in recognition of what it called their “large and systemically important economies.” The lines were to help ensure that those economies could obtain funding. Such facilities are normally extended only to industrialized nations. This move illustrates vividly the importance of emerging economies in the international financial system.

In addition, the institutions of the global financial and monetary system have been fully engaged. The past few months have seen intense discussions among the G-7 finance ministers and central bankers, the G-20 finance ministers and central bankers, and the Basel Group of central bankers. The G-20 heads of state and government have met in Washington. Meanwhile, the IMF has speedily provided large sums to Hungary, Iceland, and Ukraine and is considering similar packages for Belarus, Pakistan, Romania, and Serbia. As these actions suggest, the emerging economies have been brought into the management of this crisis to a far greater degree than in the past.

The world is now a very different place. This time around, America is at the epicenter of the crisis, while over the past ten years many Asian countries have put their economies on a much sounder financial footing. Some have substantial sums of money in their foreign-currency reserves and sovereign wealth funds. Under the right conditions, their capital could help to alleviate the credit crunch elsewhere in the world. The continued growth of these emerging economies, especially Brazil, China, India, and Russia, as well as other nations at similar stages of development, will be an important component in the recovery of the world economy.

The current financial crisis, in which all nations are now to various degrees enmeshed, may be the catalyst for new and better ways of working together. And the current international response may well mark the beginning of a historic change in the way the world’s economic policy makers coordinate their efforts, much as the creation of the G-7 did three decades ago.

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