July 13, 2006
As the leaders of the leading industrialized democracies (United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia-with the European Union having observer status at these meetings) meet in St. Petersburg, Russia this weekend one wonders whether these meetings are still relevant. European countries are way over-represented in the G8 meetings. One has to ask why the European Union is invited to attend as observers when they are the most dominant group of countries already represented individually. Just have the country holding the rotating EU presidency attend to speak for Europe. And the idea of Russia even being a member of this group - not withstanding actually being the host this year - seems out of place. The G8 is supposed to be comprised of the nations with the largest economies in the world. They should support market economies, democracy and a free press.
One could argue that Russia meets none of these criteria. I attended the first G8 Summit in Denver, Colorado in 1997 - before that these summits were called the G7. For the first time Russia was offered a seat as former President Bill Clinton wanted to reward former Russian President Boris Yeltsin for putting Russia on track towards democracy. At that time Russia was nowhere near being a leading economic power as even the Netherlands had a bigger economy. It was obvious at that time Russia was not in the same league economically as the other members. Today Russia is awash in oil money but is still surpassed by other countries with larger economies who are not members. Why should Russia be a G8 member and not China or India or Spain or South Korea or Brazil?
And Russia is not exactly a thriving democracy with a free press. If anything, they are rapidly retreating from democratic principles and the Putin government has been stifling the emergence of a critical and free media. Senator John McCain has stated that he thought President Bush should not have attended the G8 Summit this year in St. Petersburg to show our anger at the Putin government for turning its back on the principles that are supposed to define G8 members. But President Bush is attending and will most likely get along well with his host and the other world leaders in attendance. What started as informal gatherings of world leaders in the mid 1970s the G8 Summits are now partly a circus attended by so many journalists from around the world that it only proves the old adage that the more journalists covering an event the less likely that there will be any news generated at all. And, of course, little news comes out of the G8 Summits anymore. In fact, most of the final communiqués have already been written before the meetings have even started! Having covered four of the G8 Summits in the past I can tell you that the press doesn’t get anywhere near the activity that is going on with the world leaders. And, today the main concern of the G8 Summits seems to be their own security. Since 9/11 security precautions have been extreme in protecting the visiting world leaders. Protestors get nowhere near the meetings - last year at Gleneagles in Scotland a large fence had been established to keep any protestors far away from the official proceedings. The main themes on the official agenda this weekend in St. Petersburg are energy security, infectious diseases and education but the leaders will most likely be discussing the possibility of a larger war in the Middle East breaking out, Iraq, Iran and North Korea. However, if the G8 does continue - next year it will be held in Germany - they need to go back to an informal setting and forget all the pomp and circumstance that now go into these events. Each country tries to upstage the previous years host with bigger and splashier events. The G8 is too Europe focused. Why not just have the European Union represented rather than all the individual countries? Why not have a country from Latin America represented? And, if a country is going to host a group of the leading economic and democratic nations in the world, shouldn’t they also be one of the top economies who actually practices democracy? The world will be treated to pictures of the beautiful city of St. Petersburg, but we will be hard pressed to find anything of substance that will come out of the G8 Summit this weekend that will actually change events anywhere in the world for the better. The G8 Summits need to be greatly changed or resigned to the dustbins of history. . .
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