Thursday, 07.10.08
The Case For The G-Ain't
Photo by flickr user mujitra under Creative Commons license
Reflections on the G-8 Breakthrough
10 July 2008
Straight Talk
26 June 2008
Matt Yglesias blogs on McCain's proposal to kick Russia out of G-8.
Once upon a time -- OK, 33 years ago -- in the then-well-forested town of Rambouillet 30 miles outside Paris, the leaders of France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States met in a 600-year old chateau once reviled by Marie Antoinette as a "gothic toadhouse." After three days talking about exchange rates, trade, jobs, and other economic issues, they released a brief, anodyne 15-point statement and went home, prompting London's Daily Express to dub the meeting, the "Non-Event of the Year."
Today, the world that gave birth to the then-G-6 is as dead as, say, Gerald Ford. The Cold War and whatever geopolitical cohesion it enforced in "the West" are over. The brave new world of floating exchange rates inaugurated by the Nixon administration has yielded a global economy that no one quite knows how to control. In diplomacy, latter-day Metternichs have to contend with Bono, Gates, and Drudge. And when was the last time you recall seeing, much less reading, a 4,000-word feature on the world economy in Time magazine?
The G-8 still lives, but it's less a concert of powers than a mosh pit. At this year's meeting in Japan, there were 23 world leaders: the G-8 (which now includes Canada and Russia), the Outreach 5 (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa), three other "Major Economies" (Australia, Indonesia, South Korea), the head of the European Union, and the Africa Outreach countries (Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania). That's not to mention the heads of the United Nations, African Union, World Bank, and IMF, the hundreds of NGO representatives banging their pots and pans, and the thousands of reporters forced to sit through treacly photo-ops (tanabata, anyone?) that would drive all but the most dedicated to commit hara-kiri with a blunt #2 pencil.
The G-8's failure this year to set clearly defined goals on cutting greenhouse gases that developing nations could also accept only highlights the group's terminal absurdity. There are regular calls to make the group more relevant and democratic by expanding it. But I've got a better idea: let's shut it down. It no longer serves its consensus-building purpose, and adding more countries arguably undermines and usurps the role of existing international organizations like the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. In 1975, the G-6's declaration made 14 commitments. By 2006 in St. Petersburg, the G-8's communique had 317. Among the other promises in this year's 72-paragraph monster are commitments to provide 100 million mosquito nets and improve health care worker training. Yes, malaria sucks, but that's why we have the World Health Organization and the United Nations Development Program.
Groups of like-minded countries can and should caucus. But for that purpose, principle is a far better common denominator than power. Look at how Russia, the G-8 member that should never have been, torpedoed the G-8's resolution on getting tough on Zimbabwe. For all China's economic importance, adding it to the G-8 mix will further diminish the like-mindedness factor. A League of Extraordinary Economies, striving to make the world safe for our commercial interests, wouldn't necessarily be a force for freedom and human rights. Instead of trying to re-create a more wieldy UN under a different name, let's end the G-8's empty pageantry and bogus bonhomie, return to the boring pick-and-shovel work of multilateral diplomacy, and reinvigorate the more representative international institutions we already have.
OutdatedJim Hoagland argues that the G-8 format is out of touch with international realities and should be abandoned. |
Media circusBlake Hounshell blames the media for politicizing the G-8 and thus rendering it ineffective. |
Too differentForbes argues that a summit of nations united simply by wealth yields a group too disparate for results. |
Steady progressA University of Toronto study finds that the G-8 commitments have provided an effective means of global climate control over the past three decades. |
