ANALITICAL NOTE

G8 Summit in Strelna and the possibilities of a new global politics

CONTENTS

The transformation of G7 into G8: goals and result

G7 or UN => Gx + UN?

The transformation of G7 into G8: goals and result

As a result of the annual G8 summit that took place in the suburb of St-Petersburg in July 14-17[1] for the first sight the world’s atmosphere hasn’t changed a lot. That’s why many analysts consider this summit to be just a protocol arrangement, combined with a “picnic” for the heads of the states and governments, that doesn’t lead to any global political consequences. The Mass Media’s attention was captured by the fact that during this summit V. Putin showed his “arrowy tongue”, dealing with an “attack” of western politicians and journalists on Russia, and the other members were afraid to become victims of his poignancy.

So the British newspaper “Times” published an article “Jokes backfire at G8 as leaders smart from Putin’s acid tongue[2]”.

“LAST WEEK Dick Cheney was the target. On Saturday it was President Bush. Then came Tony Blair. No one, it seems, is immune from Vladimir Putin’s acid tongue.

World leaders must have been wondering yesterday who would be next, after the Kremlin chief had embarrassed two of his guests at the G8 summit here with barbed jokes about their democratic records.

But they were powerless to respond to a man at the pinnacle of his political career and at the helm of a resurgent economic powerhouse.

“What can you say to a man who controls the weather?” asked one Western diplomat after Russian authorities were reported to have scrambled cloud-seeding jets to disperse a rainstorm.

Mr Putin’s dig at Mr Bush came during their joint news conference, casting doubts on the close personal friendship that the two men claim to enjoy. Mr Bush said that he had told the Russian leader that people in the United States wanted Russia to promote the sort of democratic institutions that exist in Iraq.

Mr Putin’s deadpan response caused even the thick-skinned Texan to blush. “To be honest, we certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq,” Mr Putin said, prompting laughter and applause from reporters[3]

Mr Putin’s confrontational style also mirrors his growing confidence on the international stage. When he took over as president in 2000, he was written off by many as a grey, transitional figure.

Today he is one of Russia’s most popular and powerful leaders since Peter the Great, the tsar who founded St Petersburg in 1703. By contrast, more than half of his G8 counterparts — Messrs Bush, Blair, Chirac and Koizumi — are “lame ducks” nearing the end of their tenures.

“I think he’s enjoying himself. He’s proud,” said another source close to the Kremlin. “He’s also a bit of a showman. He’s a performer and he thinks on his feet, including with the media.”

Mr Putin has a long history of making acerbic off-the-cuff comments. In 1999 he vowed to hunt and destroy Chechen rebels, even “in the s***house”.

Mr Blair is still smarting from the time in 2003 when Mr Putin, at a joint news conference, mocked the failure of Britain and the United States to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And just last week, Mr Putin took a personal stab at Mr Cheney, who riticized the Kremlin in May for backsliding on democracy and using its energy resources to blackmail neighbours. Mr Putin called the speech an “unsuccessful hunting shot” in a reference to Mr Cheney’s accidental shooting of a hunting companion”[5].

Most of other analysts seem to be shallow-minded either:

“As Ukrainian newspaper “Delo” shirty writes[6]

[7] http://delo.ua/ru/news/8504.html, “Putin knew all the vulnerable places of his guests and hit them without any fear. It’s amazing that the Russian president got away with it. Blair didn’t leave the Summit and what is more even didn’t wisecrack. And there’s nothing to say about George Bush”. We have to admit that the US president couldn’t vie with the Russian leader in esprit, but he managed to surprise the others with his rather clumsy “Yeltsin-style” attempt to make a neck massage to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor”, - marks “The Russian Journal”, July 25, 2006. (M. Zharov, “Vladimir Putin’s irony”:

comments/124240331?user_session=7774a17cc75c2bad394c1b138df1fdca).

It seems that the authors of the article published in “Times” didn’t guess to recall an English saying: “one who lives in a glass house shouldn’t peg at others”. Actually V. Putin hinted with his “jokes” on this circumstance, as long as the G7 leaders didn’t come to understanding on their own.

The Mass Media analysts from all over the world are dissatisfied with futility of Summit in Strelna, rebuking namely V. Putin. However there are those in the West, who look deeper and remember the facts not only of the present days but of the past either:

“But what did this gathering of leaders — representing in toto some 67 percent of the world’s GNP — actually achieve?

Well, they agreed corruption is bad. They exchanged views on political philosophy. They reaffirmed that Iran and North Korea should not have nuclear weapons. They stressed no one wants war in the Middle East[7].

We needed a summit for this?

To be sure, the announcement of new initiatives for putting the world’s most dangerous substance — enriched uranium — under firmer supervision and control was quite welcome. But it was one of the few things to come out of the meeting that is actionable. Otherwise, the overriding theme seemed to be “message.” In a variant on the Field of Dreams mantra, “If you agree on a joint statement, policy will follow.”

Some critics, of course, have a ready answer: It is Russia’s fault. If Putin were not in the chairman’s seat, if only we went back to a Group of Seven, we would have a far more robust position on Iran, on the Middle East crisis, and so forth.

I saw no evidence of this in St. Petersburg. It is very true Putin made no secret that in the talks he was going to advance and defend Russia’s national interest (a phrase he used so many times during his joint press conference with President Bush on Saturday that, if suitably sampled, could make a wonderful advertisement for the journal I edit) — and that he was not going to automatically accept the U.S. perspective on any given issue. Having said that, recreating the G-7 in 2006 would not have been more effective. Since the disappearance of the USSR, the notion of “the West” + Japan forming a tightly integrated security and economic bloc has been weakening, and that was clearly on display in St. Petersburg. Trans-Atlantic divergences mattered just as much; Putin on his own could not throw a monkey wrench into the works if he truly faced a united Seven. Excluding him would still have resulted in a laborious search for consensus in carefully worded documents expressing “concern.” – Nikolas K. Gvosdev writes in the article “«The diamond smoke» of St-Petersburg’s summit”, published in the US journal “National Review”, 19.07.2006.