The G8 summit produced the now routine empty promises but also showed ominous signs of growing tensions and conflicts between the great powers. Dave Stockton argues that the two terms of the Bush presidency, far from laying the basis for “another American century", have proved to be a disaster for US imperialism as its hegemony in the world faces unprecedented challenges.
The 2007 G8 summits and its meagre results indicate growing tensions and conflicts amongst the imperialist powers. Not only did the events in and outside the summit express the mounting pressure on the G8 from the streets of the world but behind the fence the G8 could not come to agreement on their most pressing concerns.
For any one who expected major steps forward for humanity from the G8 summit it proved to be a total flop. On climate change all the much hyped pressure on George Bush produced only a promise to “seriously consider” a global target to halve emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. OK, he was pressured into be a hypocrite on the issue, not the arrogant bastard he has been at previous summits! This was heralded, with no apparent irony, as a “major, major step” by Blair!
Likewise the G8 leaders could not be prevailed upon to do any more for Africa than recycle the very modest promises they made in Gleneagles two years ago. They are already over 50 per cent behind fulfilling even these meagre targets. So shocking was this cynicism that even world summit groupies like Bono and Bob Geldoff were indignant, calling the G8 leaders “creeps” and describing the summit as “a farce, total farce".
In fact the G8 fooled very few people this time. Of course, the German press has bigged up the role of Chancellor Merkel (and therefore of Germany) in getting George to lie about his commitment to the struggle against climate change. It is true, however, that Bush was a shadow of his former arrogant self. No wonder, his empire at home as a well as abroad in open revolt. It is therefore no surprise that the Russian President Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to openly defy Bush’s plans for a missile defence (sic) shield on the borders of Russia.
The City of London’s Financial Times openly questioned what was the use of holding such expensive media-focussed jamborees. As well as providing an opportunity for opponents of the neoliberal order to gate crash the jamboree, it also forces our rulers to make pretense of addressing all sorts of problems their system cannot begin to tackle. On climate change and the rampant poverty and disease in Africa no consensus can be reached. Why not? Quite simply because to solve these issues would damage the overriding priority of these imperialists – the pursuit of profit and empire.
As for the matters where the imperialist powers need to settle differences and coordinate their efforts – forget it! In recent years G8 summits have only served to display their mounting disunity; on world energy supplies, free trade and the appropriate targets for the “war on terrorism”. Indeed this latter issue was kept studiously off the agenda in Heiligendamm.
G8 leaders Africa swindle exposed
At the end of the summit British Prime Minister Tony Blair said “immense progress” for Africa had been made, pointing to the reassertion of the Gleneagles goals. “The important thing is we have set out how we are going to do them” he lied.
G8 leaders promised to deliver on pledges made in 2005 to double aid for Africa by the end of the decade. They announced a $60bn (£30bn) package for fighting Aids, malaria and TB. But because of their failure so far to pay up on their 2005 pledges, the reaction of all the major NGO’s and even celebrity campaigners, denounced them as the same old money pledged and announced year after year.
Max Lawson, Senior Policy Advisor at Oxfam said: “The hard and sad fact is that as leaders fly away from Germany they are still set to break their Gleneagles promise to the tune of $27bn. The $60bn for HIV/AIDS, health, TB and malaria represents, at most, an extra $3bn of aid in 2010. This is welcome but falls $27bn short of what the G8 pledged in 2005.”
Aditi Sharma, ActionAid’s Head of HIV and AIDS campaign called Heiligendamm “a last-minute face-saving effort that falls scandalously short of need.” “Even this $60 billion smokescreen can’t cover up for the abject failure of the G8 to move forward on their AIDS promises,” she said.
The World Development Movement commented: “The G8 are past masters at repackaging existing aid commitments into big new announcements. The noise around today’s announcement does nothing to change the fact that they have failed to meet even the inadequate promises they made in 2005."
Bob Geldof – who spun Gleneagles as a major step forward – jibbed at doing the same for Heiligendamm. “I won’t have it spun as anything else, except a farce,” he grumbled. However he still brown-nosed Blair and Gordon Brown as the heroes of the day. Blair himself of course “spun” the Heiligendaam deal as “immense progress". But like the faded pop stars they are, they won’t learn and pledged themselves to go through the pleading and begging in Japan in 2008.
This makes the words of Walden Bello apt ones. In a brilliant speech to the 80,000 strong rally in Rostock he said: “two years ago we were at Gleneagles where the protest organisers asked the G8 for favours and o deliver on Aid for Africa. This time we have no rock stars and our message is not to request things from the G8 but to tell them to clear out of the way.” He closed by recalling the historic protests in Genoa, saying: “today in Rostock we have the spirit of Genoa with us – not the spirit of Edinburgh."
Climate Change
Tony Blair’s claim of a breakthrough in the battle against climate change was based on George Bush’s promise that the United States would “seriously consider” a global target to halve emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. Bush’s poodle to the last, Blair said that this was “unimaginable” a year ago. Blair aides insisted Bush’s movement on climate change was total vindication of their man’s “shoulder-to-shoulder” approach on Iraq.
But all the forces seriously campaigning on climate change saw through the spin immediately. Friends of the Earth said the G8 agreement was “weak and lacked substance". John Sauven, the director of Greenpeace UK, said: “Bush says the US will ’seriously consider’ substantial long-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, but that’s like saying aid to Africa is a good thing then refusing to actually commit to donating a single dollar”.
Another “great concession” by Bush touted by his British poodle was that he had “committed” to a United Nations-led process. But he immediately gave himself an escape clause by making his support conditional on China and India signing up to the worldwide emissions targets. The Brazilian, Indian and Chinese representatives present immediately made clear their refusal to move till the biggest polluters (i.e. the USA, the EU and Japan) agreed to make substantial cuts in their emissions.
Greenpeace says that unless the already industrialised countries take the lead and commit to 30% cuts by 2020 as well as 80-90% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels there is no hope of effective action and no hope of persuading newly industrializing giants to come on board. Greenpeace a said before hand these were “the bare minimum that the G8 must commit to for the Heiligendamm.”
OK, so they did nothing, why? The climate question touches the vital but totally opposed economic interests of all the major powers, engaged as they are in a savage struggle for rapidly depleting supplies of oil and gas and, consequently, of rising prices for them. Clearly any binding treaties on the lowering of greenhouse gases, will advantage some countries over others. The US is heavily dependent on fossil fuels and far behind in “alternative sources.” That is part of the reason why it launched its wars to conquer the Middle East and Central Asia.
Its aim being to ensure supplies for the coming half-century or more. No wonder it will only promise to “consider” restrictions on emissions for the rest of Bush’s presidency and that it places as a precondition the rapidly expanding China and India must “come on board”- i.e. accept quotas which will limit their development to levels that benefit the USA.
A New Cold War?
The rivalry between the imperialist states themselves and also with the “new developers,” especially China, over control of or access to raw materials, energy sources, cheap labour and markets has shot up summit after summit since 2001.
This time tensions between the United States and Russia were in the foreground with a series of public clashes. These focused on the US plan to install interceptor missiles and radar stations in Eastern Europe, on the US and European-backed push for Kosovan independence, on Washington’s arms shipments to Lebanese government in the ongoing crisis, and “democratic” outcries against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on oppositionist forces within Russia.
Newsweek magazine recently ran an article citing “a senior Bush administration official” who claimed that Russia is “slowly becoming a revisionist power, seeking to revisit the settlements of ’89 and ’91 that ended the cold war”. US Administration spokespeople have stressed the importance of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) tightly monitoring the conduct of the Duma elections due in December 2007 and the presidential elections timetabled for March 2008.
US NGOs who played a big role in the so-called Orange and Tulip revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine are clearly targeting Russia. Bush’s post-G8 trip to Albania, surely the only country on earth where the populace would mob him enthusiastically – in order to proclaim is total support for immediate independence for Kosovo. The main purpose of this is not, of course, deep commitment to self-determination or because Albania is such a model of democracy, but precisely to humiliate Putin and encourage his vassals and allies to revolt, to realize that the USA is the big player in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The missile shield (which has dubious capacities to shoot down incoming missiles even if they were the remotest possibility of Iran and North Korea possessing intercontinental ballistic missiles) is only one element of a strategy that includes the establishment of US military bases in former Soviet Central Asian Republics and the stationing of NATO forces in former Warsaw Pact countries – both in clear contravention of agreements made in the 1990s. Putin can point to 10,000 NATO troops stationed in military camps in Bulgaria and Romania as evidence of these breaches by the US.
Thus, on the Friday before the summit started Putin warned of a “new arms race in Europe”, telling Der Spiegel: “For the first time in history, components of the American nuclear system will be established on the European continent” and that this changes “the entire configuration of international security,” disturbing “the strategic balance in the world”.
Though talk of a “New Cold War” is one of those deliberate media overplays, made in order to obscure sensible analysis as to what this conflict means, it undoubtedly true that Russia now feels itself able to publicly resist the US drive into its ”near abroad”, i.e. in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. In case anyone should wonder at a major state’s sensitivity in such matters we need only remember the USA’s track record, e.g. its ongoing blockade of Cuba and the Contra War in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Bush’s new agression in this region of the world, reflects the huge problems US imperialism faces elsewhere. The embroilment in Iraq has not only politically weakened the standing of the US in the world, but also massively impeded its ability to wage any other military campaigns. Add to this, its unflinching support for Israel and we can see why he has massively inflamed public opinion in the Middle East. Lastly, but not least, he has “lost” large chunks of the USA’s back yard – Latin America – as anti-American left populists have come to power across the continent. Add to this the immense hostility to the US government’s war on terror in western Europe and we can see this is a superpower whose reign is increasingly contested by the peoples of the world.
The results of all this means that various large to medium size powers can now afford to ignore the US’s wishes and even defy it at a diplomatic level. So too the powers which dominate the European Union, whilst still observing all the diplomatic niceties, are steadily building up the EU as a power that can, in the future, go its own way in the world, defend its strategic economic interests against the US, without having continually to pay tribute to the US, e.g. by allowing its forces to use Europe as a staging post for its military adventures.
Thus the situation in the opening decades of the twenty first century (in a marked contrast to the golden decades of the mid twentieth century) is not one where the hegemony of one imperialist power can work to the benefit of all of them. Bush’s double term as President has been used to try to grab the basis for “another American century” at the expense of the others. The leading lights of his administration were even well-known members of the group “The Project for a New American Century” that held this explicit aim. But despite the enormous expenditures of the war on terror, despite the flush of the present cyclical boom and the hurrahs of the China maniacs that capitalism had attained a new crisis-free paradigm, Bush’s eight year reign has proved a colossal failure.
The reason for inability of the G8 to maintain order and harmony in their own ranks, let alone in the world, lies in the simple fact that the re-division of the world made in the aftermath of the downfall of the Soviet Union is coming more and more under challenge. Russia is not the only “revisionist” power. The leaders of the EU Germany and France, China, even India and Brazil are not contented with the 1989-91 re-division of the world. In the arena of world politics this is the key underlying cause of the growing instability and crisis.