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At the World's Summit

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At the World's Summit At the World’s Summit: How Will Leading Nations Lead? June 2009 James Traub James Traub is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and director of policy for the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. He has written four books, including The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power and, most recently, The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did). The implosion of the European system of alliances the losers, Germany and Japan, as well as such rising which produced World War I convinced the statesmen powers as India and Brazil. Yet an alliance of incum- of that era that global security had to be governed by a bents and second-tier powers has defeated all attempts new system, embodied in a new institution—the at change. League of Nations. The subsequent calamities of the Great Depression and pitiful failure of the league to And so a political handicapper would insist that the deter the Axis powers prompted another round of central issue is not, “Which institutions most need anguished introspection and a new generation of insti- reform?” but rather, “Where have the pressures for tutions—the United Nations, the International change become irresistible?” By this calculus the Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank, and The membership of the G-8, and the alignment of power World Trade Organization. Now, sixty years later, we in the IMF and The World Bank, is far likelier to stand, or so it is widely said, at the threshold of change than the UNSC. Why? In no small part another burst of invention—“Creation 2.0,” as it has because you can’t keep China out of the world’s inner been called. Rather than a war, the ferment this time councils, and while China is already on the Security comes from a global financial crisis, the emergence of Council, it remains an outsider for other prominent novel and interconnected transnational problems, and forums. Other dynamics are also at work. The finan- the swift rise of a new cohort of powerful states, all of cial crisis has empowered the IMF, but not the bank. which have exposed the limits of the post-war institu- No institution now coordinates national policies on tions, and perhaps rendered them obsolete. Even hard- climate change, but cataclysmic fears about global shell realists have become converts. “We’ve got a new warming still seem over the horizon. And so on. world now,” says Brent Scowcroft, the first President Creation 2.0, in short, will probably not be a big Bush’s national security advisor. “But we still have bang, but a protracted evolution. habits of mind of the 20th century and the Cold War, and all the institutions we have were built for a world Fading Relevance of the G-8 1 which has disappeared.” One fundamental difference with the post-war moment is that the great powers now have a club of their own— And so we have reached a kind of Darwinian pivot— the G-8. Although diplomats and scholars debate its adapt or die. Or have we? It takes a crisis of immense effectiveness, much of the discussion over institutional proportions to overcome the inertia which inheres in reforms revolves around the composition and the institutions—and even more, in the distribution of sphere of competence of this global board of directors. power within those institutions. There is surely no The G-8 consists of the leading Western democracies more glaring example of institutional archaism than and Russia, which was admitted only in 1997. But the the UN Security Council (UNSC), which affords West no longer has a monopoly on economic power, permanent membership to the five states which and the G-8, which unlike the Security Council focuses emerged victorious from World War II, and excludes more on economic concerns than on questions of inter- Policy Analysis Briefs are thought-provoking contributions to the public debate over peace and security issues. The views expressed in this brief are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Stanley Foundation. The author’s affiliation is listed for identification purposes only. 2 national peace and security, has been compelled to look beyond its narrow member- ship. Since 2007, the eight have extended to China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa a kind of ex officio status. But the global financial crisis has made this arrange- ment not only vaguely insulting but also untenable; in November of 2008, President George Bush, no friend of multilateral institutions or of emerging powers, convened a meeting of the G-20. The twenty leaders met again in London in April, and are next scheduled to convene in the Pittsburgh, September 24-25, 2009. The economic meltdown has made the G-8 obsolete. As Robert Hormats, a former Treasury and State Department official who attended the first meeting of what was the G-6, in 1975, puts it, “You didn’t need a lot of countries to constitute a steering group for the global economy; they could manage the global economy among them- selves. That’s inconceivable now.”2 It is just as inconceivable on trade, or on climate change. Does that mean that an updated version of this elite club—which in essence consists of a two-day meeting of heads of state at some decommissioned palace in or near a global capital—should become the central node of global governance? This view is becoming increasingly common. One prime mover of G-expansionism, former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, recently joined two scholars to argue that, in addition to the current financial crisis, “future G-20 summits should also And so we have drive the reform of the international financial institutions and address other major global concerns—climate change, poverty and health, and energy, among others.”3 reached a kind Such a “global apex forum” would operate not as an executive, decision-making body (as the Security Council is), but rather as an instrument to shape consensus on of Darwinian major transnational issues, which would ultimately be adjudicated by other organs pivot—adapt or with universal or near-universal membership, such as the United Nations. The authors of a recent study, Power and Responsibility: Building International Order die. Or have we? in an Era of Transnational Threats, describe the role they see for a more inclusive G-grouping to serve as a “prenegotiation forum” bringing together “the smallest possible grouping of necessary stakeholders”; “a mechanism for building knowl- edge, trust, and patterns of cooperative behavior among the most powerful states”; and a device for such states to “encourage one another to take responsibility” for their global obligations.4 The G-8 itself has already evolved along these lines. These conclaves began as strictly financial sessions, with a head of state accompanied by his or her finance minister. Then the finance ministers began holding separate sessions—eventually expanding to include the twenty largest economies—while the agendas of the heads of states grew to include poverty and development, immigration, climate change, and the like. As the issues confronting the major states become increasingly complex, and increasingly insoluble in the absence of concerted international action, leaders have found these annual retreats a congenial forum. The lack of effective institutions to deal with these problems and the increasing immobility of the Security Council have left a vacuum which the G-8 has filled. It is thus likely, both for substantive reasons and as a matter of momentum, that the expanded G-8, whatever its composition, will broaden in scope just as the G-8 has. One of the most striking examples of this ad hoc phenomenon is the Major Economies Forum, launched by President Bush in 2007 as the Major Emitters Forum. Bush’s objective was to establish a kind of climate change “coalition of the willing,” bringing together the sixteen largest emitters of greenhouse gas to discuss the issue outside the framework of the United Nations. Despite its anti-multilateral origins, the states themselves considered the forum a useful instrument to develop common approaches. The Obama administration has agreed to preserve the body, rechris- tening it the Major Economies Forum. President Obama will chair the forum’s meeting on the margins of the July G-8 meeting in Italy. The goal is to achieve rough 3 consensus both on mechanisms for financing adaptation to climate change (none now exist) and on the development and dissemination of key technologies. Climate negotiators also hope to get a head start, though not much more, on the terms of a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol—a process which formally begins in December, when all parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) meet in Copenhagen. If the expanded G-8 is truly to become a “global apex forum,” then the question of who sits on it becomes a momentous one. Picking the right criteria for membership has thus become a cottage industry within the Washington think tank world. In one intriguing paper, three officials at the Center for Global Development have proposed that any such institution must both bring together states with the most resources, thus ensuring that decisions will be effective, and those with the most people, so that deliberations will also be seen as truly representative.5 Setting a threshold of states that represent more than two percent of the world’s population or its total GDP, they come up with a G-16 of major stakeholders. As a way to make the group more representative without too great a cost to effectiveness, they suggest adding five regional representative countries—thus producing a version of the G-20 that gives smaller nations a place at the global high table.
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