I was asked some questions by a journalist yesterday on the G7, in writing. I have no idea if they will use any of the comments I made: they may be too complex for the style of the intended publication. So I will share them here.
Q: What are the highlights of the G7 summit?
I have watched G7, G8 and G20 Summits for a long time, and attended a couple. Usually you can detect a theme, and say there is a notable feature that characterises the outcome of a meeting. This time that is not true. Unless we look a little deeper that is. Then we can see that this Summit was characterised by differences, whether between the UK and the EU and the major European countries or the US and China over trade and the US and France over tax and Iran. What characterised this Summit is the fact that the world's major nations are now so far apart, and that the gaps seem to be getting wider.
Q: What happened after the arrival of the foreign minister of Iran?
This was a big surprise that I think few expected. I hope the US did know about it in advance. It is not clear. What is apparent is that the visit did highlight how much Europe wants to keep the Iran nuclear deal going, and how indifferent the USA is to that. France tried to pull off a stunt to help it achieve Europe's goal. I am not at all sure that it worked. In that case this might have made things worse, not better.
Q: Comparing the G7 of 2018 and the current one, what changes were there?
The G7 in 2018 was not easy. Remember Trump left early and there was no final communiqué as a result. This time the communiqué was abandoned to try to keep things on track, but that is a sure sign of how relationships have deteriorated between the US and its partners, and also between the UK and the EU, where the stresses were only thinly disguised. The 2018 Summit was a shock because it was apparent that the world was in diplomatic crisis that was being evidenced by very real stresses. This Summit confirms that things are still really bad, and getting worse.
Q: President Trump insisted on the readmission of Russia to the group. Could this situation occur in the future?
It is anyone's guess as to what Trump is trying to achieve with his line on Putin and Russia. It seems unlikely that Europe is going to forget the annexation of Crimea in a hurry. There does therefore seem no appetite in any European capital for Russia's return. There seems little doubt Trump is committed to seeing that happen. The question is whether he will have Putin as his surprise guest at next year's Summit in the USA just as France had Iran this year. I would not rule it out, whatever the rest of the G7 think.
Q: This summit was the first of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, how was it?
Boris Johnson was always going to do better than his predecessor, Theresa May at this event. She hated them and he loves an audience. That said, most people in the UK at least think he did better than expected. There were no obvious gaffes and no silly pictures, for both of which he is famous. And that was susprising. He had a difficult path to tread. Trump was praising him more than he wanted for the sake of his home audience, where this is substantial mistrust of a potential US trade deal, whilst the stresses with the EU were never far away, but carefully kept under wraps so that they did not distract from the whole event. In summary, better than expected, but no real indication of the troubles to come.
Q: If you would like to add something on this subject it is well received
Three big questions emerge from this Summit.
The first is whether they are now worth doing when the participants are so obviously in disagreement with each other. I suggest that is why they are still worthwhile, but I wonder for how long the countries involved will agree.
Second, it is obvious that little was achieved here when on the environment, trade inequality and tax there was so much to do. The failure of the world to address the common issues it faces is troubling.
And third, a new format to these events is needed. People are alienated by the showmanship, the excess and the obvious falsehood that these events always seem to embrace now. Leaders might be much wiser to do low key meetings in the future and get things done. Not a lot actually happened in Biarritz.
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Interesting stuff Richard – thanks for sharing.
My thoughts:
Europe should invite Russia – not the USA. Look what the USA did when they got to Russia first when the wall came down. The last thing we want is Russia and the USA getting on. Europe needs to say sorry to Russia, recognise its legitimacy and talk of getting it into Europe where it should have gone when the wall came down. I would not give up on Russia. It is a former communist state still in transition. Where was Russia in the recent WWII remembrances? That should not have happened. We need to keep making overtures to Russia – there is nothing worse than a rogue bear.
G7 – no matter bad things get, the countries should still meet. We know that the Americans are thugs (the US Government, not the people of America) but if the countries stop meeting, then the hostility will just grow. Even the brief proximity proved by the G7 will help to attenuate the growth of differences and disunity. To pull up the drawbridge so completely is not advisable in my view – although I would love to see know one turn up when it is next held in the US as rejection of Trump and Bolton etc.
The job of politicians is to keep the peace. It is their only job really. Too many of them forget about this unfortunately.
“Europe needs to say sorry to Russia, recognise its legitimacy”
Say sorry to Russia for it invading and annexing part of another country?
Have you lost your mind?
Michael says:
“Say sorry to Russia for it invading and annexing part of another country?
Have you lost your mind?”
It’s the American way. The hoohah in the Ukraine didn’t just come out of nowhere.
Michael
All I’m saying is that when the Wall came down, Europe should have played a far bigger roll in its post communist development than America – that is all. We should have got in there fast and genuinely helped rather than doing things the Chicago School way. Post communist Russia is a tragedy because instead of helping, we wanted saddle it with debt denominated in dollars. Then they told the IMF and Word Bank to sod off as their Westernised economy became a free for all.
I’m afraid Michael, the truth of the matter is that the Russia we have now is totally our fault. And that is what I’d tell Putin if I had the chance. We – the West – really fucked up.
I agree that the G7 is small and not representative but what is important as far as I am concerned is that it does the right things. I still hope for better.
All the G7 achieved is to remind us of it’s own irrelevance – select leaders parading themselves and partners like contestants in reality TV. Remember these leaders represent less than the population of China, of India or of Africa on their own. When we are finally realising that the rain forests are more important to us than oil why are the custodians of the rain forests not at the table too. The G20 is better but still the 4 largest countries in Africa are not included, for example.
Agreed
You seem to be saying something very simple and obvious. Perhaps we should not be surprised that the ultimate vested-interest, the “establishment” the G7
* plays by these rules, or that
* it (a vested-interest, i.e. the “establishment”) fails even to acknowledge the aforementioned truisms – until or unless (of course) they advance and make more assured and obvious the ideology of the ruling elite?
It was something like this as developed many years ago by the likes of Noam Chomsky that first beckoned many of us – probably you too – to question and distrust the “status quo” and its lazy, often hypocritical, values. Some of us eventually joined the more radical road of democratic socialism and others – usually the inattentive and easily fooled – a pretend ‘liberal’ movement.
Maybe you are right, the “showmanship” and the reality of Biarritz are being seen as different more clearly by more people than ever before. FWIW , if true, the publication you were interviewed by will probably discard and ignore your answers. Let us know.
Don’t get me wrong. I abominate Mr Bolsonaro and all he stands for. But he has a point: the G7 summits have the whiff of colonialism about them. The leading economic powers, admittedly with democratic governments, self righteously gather to organise the world to accord with their own interests. A few token third world leaders are invited- this time from former French colonies such as Senegal and Mali. No Russia. No South American countries. Canada – population 25 million, but not Mexico with twice the population. Japan, but not China. Great photo op, though. Beauty parade. And next year, a boost for Trump’s re-election campaign, while the world leaders dwell in “trmendous” bungalows and scoff “beautiful” chocolate cake at Trump’s Florida palace, Mar el Lago.
Yes Mike G, powerful self-interest groups always use the status quo and the uncertainty it might produce to further their own supremacy and dominion..
Maybe Trump’s deleriums (deleria?) with Iran, Venezuala, China and N. Korea are challenging the winners (I mean the establishment and the the G7’s) ability to misrepresent and ignore whatever it is that is bad for them.
Their cover is blown. Even the liberal and proper-left are seeing it now. Perhaps reality has it boots on and is way ahead of them already. Chomsky et-al were righter than we thought all those years ago.
The G7 does not act in many people’s interests. It’s usually with the few and talking loudly and incessantly *at* the many. Like with a Blair illegal war, the many see this clearer than many think.
Donald Trump and Russia….
What’s that about ? He did say on the presidential campaign trail that he wanted to have a chat with Putin and he presumably believes they would get on and have some areas of common interest were he could make one of his famous deals. The Russia-gate media storm was invented to quash that.
The situation in Crimea was created by Western expansionist ambitions so to blame Russia for creating that problem as if it were Russian expansionism is not remotely convincing to me. The EU looks like piggy in the middle here.
I suspect at bottom Trump wants more cordial relations with Russia because the US can’t afford to take-on China the way it is doing and risk a Sino-Russian alliance.
What’s been going on in Jackson Hole may prove to be of more significance. It is after all the bankers who call the shots these days.
Re. Russia and the G7. Russia has a GDP lower than the combined GDPs of Belgium, and the Netherlands,. It is an economic pigmy. Its agriculture is inefficient, with low productivity, and backward; It has no significant pharmaceutical industry, Information Technology industry, consumer goods industries; for foreign exchange, it is almost entirely dependent on exports of mineral products, especially crude oil and other hydrocarbon products won from the earth. It has a stagnant and ageing population. It excels only in military technology and aerospace – and the civilian airplanes are way behind Boeing or Airbus. It is surely only because of its geographical vastness and immense military capability that it should be included among the “elite” G7 nations that suppose they have the right to order the destiny of the planet.
Macron did discuss the Iran visit with Trump that evening. It was announced on state TV .
The only advancement is that Trump didn’t refuse outright to plan a future U.S./Iran meeting on the nuclear deal. This is as far as it went. Not much, but not nothing either, for what it’s worth…nothing to lose. I don’t really see how it could backfire, but we’ll see soon enough.
Macron also discussed quite openly the significant divisions between the G7 countries in his interview on Sunday night, recognising the very limited progress he was expecting from such a summit. He added that the world has never been so fragmented in modern times.
The man is no fool, he uses G7 as a way of positioning himself as a leading EU figure at a time when the UK is becoming irrelevant, Merkel losing her grip, and Italy in turmoil.
He had invited Putin at the Presidential Summer residence a couple of days before the Summit. This lead to an outrage of course, but Macron meant to keep the door ajar for Russia, despite Putin, whom he knows is having issues on the home front.
For him, it was well played. All that mattered to his internal as well as international politics, and EU positioning really.
And I’m not a fan of the man, or the politician.
Richard, Did this interview get any coverage in the press?
Not that I have noticed
But I don’t always
I saw live it on French TV, France2, interview with Anne-Sophie Lapix.
I don’t think the British press covered any of it…other priorities possibly?