The real world
Expectations are running ahead of the G8’s capacity to deliver
A few months ago, much of the population of Britain would have assumed that “the G8” was the next generation of mobile telephony or perhaps a desirable sports car. After the events of the past week in particular, those same people will be aware that the G8 is a political institution and have the impression that the eight men who will start talking at the Gleneagles Hotel tonight have it in their gift to make decisions that will transform the world. Excessive expectations are, in this respect, more dangerous than outright ignorance about this meeting.
For there is the risk now that even if the final communiqué produces a set of important initiatives, the charge of “betrayal” will be heard from groups whose dogmatic disposition means that a “bourgeois democratic” summit of those tainted by their intimate links with “globalised capitalism” is part of a callous and deliberate conspiracy which allows millions of children in Africa to starve and for the planet itself to be broiled by 2050. There is, in truth, little that the G8 can say or do that will appease such nihilistic and eccentric critics.
It is worth recalling what the G8 is before condemning it for what does or does not emerge in the next few days.
The G8 is a relatively informal body, supposedly representing the principal economies of the globe, which brings together the presidents or prime ministers of those nations once a year and whose finance ministers and foreign ministers meet more frequently.
It has no permanent secretariat to speak of and the agenda varies from year to year according to the pressing questions of the moment and the political preferences of the hosts. Vladimir Putin is not obliged next year to follow where Tony Blair has led on Africa. All the leaders are to some degree constrained by their budgetary circumstances, legislatures and public opinion. The G8 is not The Earth plc.
It is, nevertheless, significant that the G8 has seen its profile increase in the course of the past decade and that the presidency of this organisation has come to be thought of as a serious political opportunity and not merely as a bureaucratic chore.
The G8 countries fulfil an economic role that the UN never has done and could not plausibly do, and their leaders have a democratic legitimacy that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank do not possess.
In that light, the G8 as an entity should consider its own composition and future carefully. If it is to act as the “top table” for the world economy, China and India should be invited to participate as soon as possible. In terms of the size of their GDPs today, this may seem like rapid promotion. In terms of their increasing influence over the next ten or twenty years, though, it would be wise to integrate them into every aspect of the international system as soon as possible.
This would mean that two nations that still have hundreds of millions of people living in real poverty would become part of what is dismissed by radical activists as a “rich man’s club”. This is a welcome prospect and one that would have interesting implications. As free markets and free trade have been the engines of China and India’s rise from economic obscurity, the politicians who represent the poor will be more enthusiastic about liberalisation than some established G8 members. If so, future G8 gatherings could prove to be more productive events.
timesonline.co.uk |
