Staying in the loop [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

The G8 will stage its 2012 summit from May 18-19 at Camp David. For the first time since Russia joined it in 1997, however, the Russian president will be absent. The newly reelected Vladimir Putin has decided not to join the summit in person for the sake of setting up his cabinet, which is largely interpreted as his response to the U.S. government assault against his reelection campaign. Though both Russia and the U.S. would not attribute Putin's absence to this reason, U.S. President Barack Obama will respond by not participating in September's APEC Summit in Vladivostok, where Russia will host the gathering for the first time.

For practical purposes, Putin may not miss much as the G8 is indeed less relevant to global governance than it was before. Most of the G8 members have been stricken by severe financial crisis. The U.S. economy began its decline in 2008 when the financial crisis occurred. Four years later, the U.S., Britain, France and Italy are still being plagued by rippling effects of that crisis, and they are now deliberating ways to rescue Greece so the euro zone would not collapse.

With the relative weakening of a number of the G8 member states in the past decade, the G8 as a whole is less credible of an institution to offer road maps of global governance – not to mention having less resource to support its agenda. When the U.S. relies on help from other countries in its financial bailout, its leadership over world affairs unavoidably suffers, and in turn it has to outsource emerging countries for their support.

The present trend in dealing with international issues is for countries to forge specialized groups to address particular challenges to the world. For instance, as G8 is no longer effective in addressing regional and global financial crises, the emergence of G20 has taken over the responsibility of G8 in this regard, meeting annually at least to act collectively to soothe the liquidity standstill and economic slowdown. To reverse global warming, the annual UN Climate Change Conference has become crucial to reach international consensus in curbing carbon emissions. Similarly, to counter the threat of nuclear terrorism, the Nuclear Security Summit was launched to specifically promote international collaboration on eliminating risks of nuclear and radiological capabilities from non-state actors.

Though the U.S. is still leading the initiatives such as G20 and the Nuclear Security Summit, the role of G8 has been much diminished if not yet marginalized. Instead, emerging economies such as China and India have been playing more prominent roles to work out the blueprints in dealing with global challenges.

G8 has passed its prime. It is quite likely that in one or two more decades, with the collective rise of BRICS nations and other developing countries, the “new money” economies would then preach the world.

Still, that is not a case for the immediate future. During this transition, G8 would certainly not willingly relinquish its powers, and its annual summit will continue, where certain directives may be produced on world affairs. The world at large could still benefit from engaging in the G8 during this time. In an interdependent world, those industrialized states could always play an important role in participating in and contributing to the well-balanced global governance.

Though the decline of G8 looks inevitable, the group could prolong its viability by transforming itself from lecturing to practicing, and from sitting alone in the driver's seat to co-piloting. As G8 is increasingly accounting for less international economic clout in the world, it has to reposition itself with a more cooperative and less imposing stance. In the same vein, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, where G8 members traditionally dominate, would also need to re-adjust themselves to suit the changing global hierarchy.

Nevertheless, G8 members still enjoy their considerable economic power at the per-capita level as well as its strength of technological innovation. The decline of the G8 could mean that it is gradually phasing out from being the director of world political and economical affairs, but it does not eliminate its possible conducive role. The economic rise of the emerging powers also has provided the impetus for G8 nations to move forward themselves. The process of the G8's decline simply indicates the ending of an age of traditional Western powers. Even if the coming G8 summit would address the issues of the North Korea, Iran and Syria, it is unlikely to come up with answers that would turn these situations around.

This author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.ccgp-fushun.com/opinion/shendingli.htm

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