Photo by: © Présidence de la République - P. Segrette
Few people pay much attention to summits nowadays. The attention they get comes more often than not from the street antics of those protesting them. There’s simply no comparing them to other multilateral gatherings: the Olympics or the World Cup, for example, which are watched by millions around the globe.
Perhaps this is how it should be: discussions among the world’s leaders cannot be subject to constant popular approval. And, unlike sporting events, they are not meant to result in winners and losers, but instead in the advancement of mutual agreement on particular questions.
All this is true in theory, at least. Today’s multilateral summits are so stage-managed as to give the impression that they are nothing more than photo opportunities. And who needs any more of those?
Yet the world would be worse off without them. For there has yet to appear another means for the leaders of the world to manage expectations on a collective, global basis, in spite of all that has been said and written about the power of informal networks and associations in communicating directly to societies in the age of the Internet. The latter has transformed much of diplomacy, to be sure. But face-to-face meetings of the world’s top leaders are still considered vital to what in the past was called “world order” and today goes by the name of “global governance.”
Accordingly, these summits are as symptomatic of the state of the world as they are essential components of it. In other words, they “are” as much as they “do.” Another way to understand this distinction is to invoke the old dual nature of republican government: elected legislatures and executives are both representative and representational of the will of the people. That is, they try to represent both the interests of those who elect them and the idea of what an elected representative should do.
In recent years the latter form of representation has increasingly overtaken the former in many countries. This trend is just as apparent internationally. Do the topics and problems discussed at the G8 represent the true interests and concerns of people around the world? How real and definitive are the usual designations of such representation: “rich countries,” “developing countries,” “Asian nations,” and so forth? Are not most delegates to the G8 and the G8 itself just as preoccupied with promoting a certain image of global governance as they are with actually governing the globe?
An empiricist would answer that it is impossible to separate the two roles. Hence the usage of a single word—represent—to signify both. Maybe that is also as it should be. If the G8 were to deny its symbolic role it would be accused of hypocrisy; if it were to deny its operational role, it would be accused of futility.
The long history of multilateral conferences suggests some continuity with the G8 in the above respect. Rarely has a conference succeeded in accomplishing its aims if held entirely in secret; when conference delegates, on the other hand, have seemed mainly interested in publicizing pet causes—as in the last Copenhagen climate conference—the event is taken to be a failure. Generally bilateral summits are considered more consequential than multilateral ones, but not always. During the Cold War, some of the bilateral Soviet-American summits produced little besides an agreement to hold another summit, whereas the 1975 Helsinki Summit that established the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe is considered to have been one of the most important meetings of the 20th century.
Traditionally, the most memorable summits are those convened to make or validate a peace treaty. From the Congress of Gela and similar instances one reads about in Thucydides to the Congresses of Vienna and Versailles, these multilateral summits (though they were not called that) were momentous affairs. By contrast, most gatherings held during peacetime, and called for the purpose of preserving, rather than making or enforcing, peace, are less memorable. Thus the context of summitry matters a great deal. Who can remember the positive achievements of a particular UN General Assembly meeting? The multilateral conferences of the interwar years gave their name to a particular style of diplomacy—called, logically, “conference diplomacy”—but achieved little else that is remembered by anyone besides diplomatic historians. Most of the meetings of the G-groups—G7, G8, G20, and so on—have taken place more or less regularly since the 1970s. But most of us would be hard pressed to state a single, tangible achievement from any of them.
Yet, as any diplomat or legislator will tell you, “process” is important and often overlooked. The norms, language and even the ideology, of global governance are written, negotiated and interpreted at such gatherings. They are essential purveyors of consensus and, occasionally, of disagreement. They may not solve all the world’s problems, and may only constitute a small portion of the actual governance and consensus–building that goes on in the world by governments and non-governmental groups, leaders and citizens alike. But, to the extent they make possible and visible a forum for such consensus at the very top, they will continue to serve a purpose, and won’t disappear any time soon.
Kenneth Weisbrode e is a diplomatic historian and author of The Atlantic Century. This article appeared in a special printed volume for the G8 Summit in France this month.
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What Good are Multilateral Summits?
May 23, 2011
Photo by: © Présidence de la République - P. Segrette
Few people pay much attention to summits nowadays. The attention they get comes more often than not from the street antics of those protesting them. There’s simply no comparing them to other multilateral gatherings: the Olympics or the World Cup, for example, which are watched by millions around the globe.
Perhaps this is how it should be: discussions among the world’s leaders cannot be subject to constant popular approval. And, unlike sporting events, they are not meant to result in winners and losers, but instead in the advancement of mutual agreement on particular questions.
All this is true in theory, at least. Today’s multilateral summits are so stage-managed as to give the impression that they are nothing more than photo opportunities. And who needs any more of those?
Yet the world would be worse off without them. For there has yet to appear another means for the leaders of the world to manage expectations on a collective, global basis, in spite of all that has been said and written about the power of informal networks and associations in communicating directly to societies in the age of the Internet. The latter has transformed much of diplomacy, to be sure. But face-to-face meetings of the world’s top leaders are still considered vital to what in the past was called “world order” and today goes by the name of “global governance.”
Accordingly, these summits are as symptomatic of the state of the world as they are essential components of it. In other words, they “are” as much as they “do.” Another way to understand this distinction is to invoke the old dual nature of republican government: elected legislatures and executives are both representative and representational of the will of the people. That is, they try to represent both the interests of those who elect them and the idea of what an elected representative should do.
In recent years the latter form of representation has increasingly overtaken the former in many countries. This trend is just as apparent internationally. Do the topics and problems discussed at the G8 represent the true interests and concerns of people around the world? How real and definitive are the usual designations of such representation: “rich countries,” “developing countries,” “Asian nations,” and so forth? Are not most delegates to the G8 and the G8 itself just as preoccupied with promoting a certain image of global governance as they are with actually governing the globe?
An empiricist would answer that it is impossible to separate the two roles. Hence the usage of a single word—represent—to signify both. Maybe that is also as it should be. If the G8 were to deny its symbolic role it would be accused of hypocrisy; if it were to deny its operational role, it would be accused of futility.
The long history of multilateral conferences suggests some continuity with the G8 in the above respect. Rarely has a conference succeeded in accomplishing its aims if held entirely in secret; when conference delegates, on the other hand, have seemed mainly interested in publicizing pet causes—as in the last Copenhagen climate conference—the event is taken to be a failure. Generally bilateral summits are considered more consequential than multilateral ones, but not always. During the Cold War, some of the bilateral Soviet-American summits produced little besides an agreement to hold another summit, whereas the 1975 Helsinki Summit that established the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe is considered to have been one of the most important meetings of the 20th century.
Traditionally, the most memorable summits are those convened to make or validate a peace treaty. From the Congress of Gela and similar instances one reads about in Thucydides to the Congresses of Vienna and Versailles, these multilateral summits (though they were not called that) were momentous affairs. By contrast, most gatherings held during peacetime, and called for the purpose of preserving, rather than making or enforcing, peace, are less memorable. Thus the context of summitry matters a great deal. Who can remember the positive achievements of a particular UN General Assembly meeting? The multilateral conferences of the interwar years gave their name to a particular style of diplomacy—called, logically, “conference diplomacy”—but achieved little else that is remembered by anyone besides diplomatic historians. Most of the meetings of the G-groups—G7, G8, G20, and so on—have taken place more or less regularly since the 1970s. But most of us would be hard pressed to state a single, tangible achievement from any of them.
Yet, as any diplomat or legislator will tell you, “process” is important and often overlooked. The norms, language and even the ideology, of global governance are written, negotiated and interpreted at such gatherings. They are essential purveyors of consensus and, occasionally, of disagreement. They may not solve all the world’s problems, and may only constitute a small portion of the actual governance and consensus–building that goes on in the world by governments and non-governmental groups, leaders and citizens alike. But, to the extent they make possible and visible a forum for such consensus at the very top, they will continue to serve a purpose, and won’t disappear any time soon.
Kenneth Weisbrode e is a diplomatic historian and author of The Atlantic Century. This article appeared in a special printed volume for the G8 Summit in France this month.
