A ‘Temperature-Taking’ on Global Summitry Health and Well-Being

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Alan Alexandroff

[Editors Note: This post is somewhat long – too long – my apologies, as I am attempting to describe the meaning of ‘Global Summitry’. The explanation follows.]

It was the receipt of a very informative piece by Mexico’s Minister of It was the receipt of a very informative piece by Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinosa-Cantellano that got me thinking about success and effectiveness in global governance. We are closing in on another G20 Leaders Summit – this Los Cabos in June – hosted by our Mexican colleagues. This will be the seventh Leaders Summit since its inauguration with the global financial crisis in November 2008 in Washington. As one of the Editors of the soon to be launched ejournal – Global Summitry – look for it! –I am fortunate to be in possession of an upcoming article from the Mexican Foreign Minister. I am not about to ‘spill the beans’ here – but stay tuned for its appearance and also possibility of further examination of the role of Mexico as the host of the G20 summit. But receiving that first article got me to thinking about the progress of the G20 specifically and in fact more generally global summitry.

This original impulse to examine the progress of global summitry was further encouraged by several upcoming conferences in Chicago – the first organized by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs – I’ve already commented on the New York Workshop in the recent post “Strange Members“. It will be held on May 8th. The next conference – commencing on May 10th is organized by the Stanley Foundation, happily a frequent partner with us at the Munk School of Global Affairs and additionally in this case the Roberta Buffet Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern. In the “shadow” of the G8 Leaders Summit – though the President very inconveniently switched the venue to Camp David – and the Leaders NATO meeting, the partners organized a Conference entitled “The Apex of Influence – How Summit Meetings Build Multilateral Cooperation”. By the way you will be able to livestream the proceedings of this conference – if you are so inclined at fora.tv. Join us virtually if you cannot be with us in Chicago. The topic directly raises the question of global summitry health. And a quick read of the conference agenda will identify as an early panelist – our colleague Dan Drezner from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. You need not wonder any further why Dan raised the question of summitry success/failure in his recent post at Foreignpolicy.com.

So I propose to do two things here. First, I wanted to examine the scope of what we at the Munk School refer to as ‘global summitry’. Is it different/the same as global governance – the now accepted term – I think – for what the international relations types generally referred to in the past as ‘multilateralism’? And does the addition of ‘global’ alter significantly the scope of inquiry? And then what I want to do – as the title suggest is do a bit of ‘temperature taking’ on the matter.

My effort to describe the scope of global summitry and distinguish it from global governance is enmeshed today in a strong and loud debate over the changing power distribution among the leading states of the international system and indeed in the overall shape of the international architecture as a result of that changing power equation. A ‘hot’ and continuing debate rages over whether the United States is in decline and whether it is fading as the hegemonic leader in global politics. Linked to this decline debate is the ‘Rise of the Rest’ and the consequence for governance of both US decline and the rise of the emerging market countries, especially China but also Brazil and India and occasionally throwing in Russia and South Africa. At the one end is Charlie Kupchan at Georgetown who in his recent book, No One’s World: The West, The Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn determines the west is declining including, possibly especially, the United States and that the Rise of the Rest will end the current liberal internationalism order as those rising powers will be unwilling to adopt the norms and rules that US hegemony created and shaped after World War II. The outcome of such a change will be that there will not be a single power there to replace the leadership of the United States, nor will there be defined ‘rules of the game’ for states in the global order. By implication disorder will reign.

Now firmly in the debate over decline, rise and transformation is Princeton’s John Ikenberry. John acknowledges the decline of the United States (see his Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order) but believes that Rise of the Rest will remain attracted to, or committed to, the current order – capitalism, open markets, rule of law, etc., Liberal internationalism will continue to frame the political order in some significant fashion. As the title implies there may be a crisis but if there is, it is a crisis of US leadership not of liberal internationalism. And of course there is Robert Kagan of Brookings, at the other end – his recent book, The World America Made – who suggests that the declinism thesis is well, overdrawn and that the United States will remain the continuing leader, or it better for the sake of order.

Now Dan Drezner in a broad-ranging review of Kupchan – not to mention some of the variants authored by others in the May/June issue of National Interest – places the variants of the current global order debate before us this way:

Power is diffusing from the United States to developing countries;
Power is diffusing from states to non-state actors; and
As a result of the bullet points above, global governance is going to be horrible for quite some time

In the opening of the recent special issue of The National Interest on crisis of the old order titled, “Crisis of the Old Order” Brent Scowcroft the former national-security adviser to President Ford and then to George H.W. Bush suggests this sharp picture of the changing international political order:

We are struggling with institutions and practices of an Old World when the Old World is fading.

How then do we best describe the current architecture of the international political order? How does it operate? And who are the principal actors and what are the drivers that describe its operation – and ultimately its success or failure? There is little question that the old order is changing – but how?

The concept of global governance really took off with the end of the Cold War. This sudden revolution in the international political order is the exclamation point in the evolution of the geopolitical landscape of the international system. There were, and are, both analytic and practical, or real-world reasons for the emergence of global governance discourse. On the analytic side the demise of the Soviet Union completely altered the shape of the international political order. As Michael Barnet and Raymond Duvall wrote in their edited volume Power in Global Governance in 2005:

The Cold War was not only a description of a bipolar system; it also represented a mode of organizing the analysis and practice of international politics. With the end of the Cold War, the issue became what would and should take its place. For many, global governance represented a way of organizing international politics in a more inclusive and consensual manner. … Alongside the eclipse of the Cold War was the emergence of globalization. Although globalization had various dimensions, a unifying claim was that intensifying transnational and interstate connections requires regulatory mechanisms – governance, although not a government – at a global level.

That last comment by the authors is telling. Global governance language initially evoked concern among many international relations experts that the in a post Cold War world the political order that was being described by analysts was moving to global government. US scholars in particular stuck rather overlong to “multilateralism”. But slowly the language of global governance assumed something of primacy in international relations discourse. As Margaret Karns and Karen Mingst in their text International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance in 2010 suggested:

Thus global government is not global government; it is not a single world order; it is not a top-down, hierarchical structure of authority. It is the multilevel collection of governance-related activities, rules and mechanisms, formal and formal, public and private, existing in the world today.

Many who have come to examine global governance have focused particularly on its non-hierarchical dimensions and on the informal structures that have emerged. They have emphasized non-state actors in many varieties including individuals. While global summitry acknowledges – embraces even – the flattening of authority structures, the state and institutions of the state remain at the heart of global summitry. But as Princeton’s Anne-Marie Slaughter suggests in her examination of governmental organizations and networks, the state does not disappear but it does often find itself “disaggregating into its component institutions.”

Thus global summitry remains focused on state institutions and its numerous variations. It consciously eschews, however, a focus on just traditional formal treaty-based institutions. Global summitry is tuned to leaders summits for sure but it acknowledges and focuses on the many organizations – governmental, and non-governmental, formal and informal – that constitute the galaxy of global summitry. This examination adopts the “Iceberg Theory of Global Governance”. Below the leaders, lie the growing system of meetings and work of ministers, and their ministries, international institutions but also transgovernmental organizations and regulatory networks with formal and informal regulatory actors. These actors are all part of global summitry. As Klaus Dingwerth and Philipp Patterberg described in their article in Global Governance in 2006 “Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politics”:

In essence global governance implies a multiactor perspective on world politics. … the term global governance conceives of world politics as a multilevel system in which local, national, regional, and global political processes are inseparably linked.

Global summitry accepts this far more complex political order where the sharp boundaries of international, regional and national policy have been partially erased but where the leaders and governments remain at the heart of international politics. International institutions have also not disappeared but traditional institutions, the UN and Bretton Woods systems are now in many instances displaced or supplemented by informal organizations. And the world of traditional diplomacy conducted by foreign ministers and their officials have been remade with the appearance of many meetings of their mainline ministers and their officials – finance, and trade, central bankers, etc., and the numerous meetings of regulatory officials both public and self regulatory of many varieties. Again Princeton’s Anne –Marie Slaughter, a strong proponent of international networks since the turn of the century suggests:

From a theoretical perspective, government networks straddle and ultimately erase the domestic/international divide.

Global summitry examines all these actors in the organization and execution of global politics and policy. The focus is then theoretic but more centrally, empirical and policy-attentive. It is alert to the repositioning of global politics and policy premised on changing dynamics and dimensions of international relations. Besides the redistribution of power among states there are other changing dimensions that are very much a part of global summitry and impact this redistribution as well. The international system has seen a marked shift, some of which I have talked about earlier: from ‘hard’ law to ‘soft’ law; from formal institutions – often hierarchical – to informal ‘flattened’ or horizontal institutions; from national sovereignty to globalization. The last dimension marks a continuing struggle of states and their leaders with many both offensively and defensively asserting national sovereignty. The rhetoric remains fixed on national autonomy yet reality is often matched against the reality of globalization and the impact of tight and possibly ever-tighter interdependence.

Finally a word on the term ‘global’ in global summitry. A perspective could well be that global is exactly that – universal such as the UN – especially given the focus on states. The term should not be taken as that. Even in the UN the critical UN Security Council is not universal – far from it. And so many institutions – often described as regional – seem perfectly a part of global summitry especially those that are not particularly geographically narrow in scope but generate policy that impacts the global order.

Global summitry remains focused on state actors but in many new arrangements and again examines all these actors in the organization and execution of global politics and policy. And because it focuses not so much theoretically but more analytically and empirically on policy and policy impacts, it is sensible to assess the success/failure of the actors and their global governance policies.

But we’ve gone on far too long already. So, that’s for another day.

Is it a Caucus; Or a Bloc?

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Alan Alexandroff

There has been a fair degree of speculation – and comment – going on around the global media and in the blogosphere whether the fourth Summit of the BRICS in New Delhi represents a new global leadership group – read that as an alternative to the the traditional powers – whether G7 or G8 or even the G20 or a setting for collective thinking from these countries?

My colleague Stewart Patrick – at the Internationalist blog at the Council on Foreign Relations captured what he sees as the common characteristics of this gathering:

But if the members lacked a common history or vision, they had at least two things in common: their status as emerging economic powerhouses and their resentment of a global economy they saw stacked in favor of the West.

By now it is rather common knowledge that the group – BRICS – was born from the fertile mind of Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs and was identified initially as an investment focus for clients of the investment bank for the 21st century.

This Indian gathering – the 4th and the first to formally include South Africa – has been watched with some fascination by the media and the global punditry. Now many commentators have pointed out the rather obvious – that these large emerging market powers have little in common. In the BRICS there are both democratic states – Brazil, India and South Africa, and two notable authoritarian states – Russia and China. But so what. If we are searching for the “like minded – we are now talking about a “concert of powers” where the common characteristics might well be essential. In fact the capacity to join states together with a variety of characteristics and views may be crucial in contemporary global summitry. Indeed as is often pointed out the G20 is important precisely because it bridges across traditional states – the G7 – and gathers these states together with the new large emerging market states. It is not a gathering of the like-minded – but it is a gathering of the key contemporary powers. It doesn’t make reaching coordinated decisions easy but it brings to the High Table of Global Summitry the major actors in the global economy.

But what then is the point of the BRICS and their annual leaders gathering – and more? For some the point of this exercise is – not much. As Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation wrote in the FT:

Being in the Brics ultimately may not mean much more than being in the UN Security Council or any other high-status grouping (despite the obvious difference that the UN is legal body). One can be in the group, but that doesn’t guarantee that one will be influential or even that the group as a whole will be effective.

The Leaders closed their Summit with the Delhi Declaration. It is possible to gather a number of clues about the existence and the self-identified mission of the BRICS from examining the most recent declaration. In their own words the Declaration argued that the BRICS:

BRICS is a platform for dialogue and cooperation amongst countries that represent 43% of the world’s population, for the promotion of peace , security and development in a multi-polar, inter-dependent and increasingly complex, globalizing world. Coming, as we do, from Asia, Europe and Latin America, the transcontinental dimension of our interaction adds to its value and significance.

The comment from the BRICS Leaders on the G20 suggests a rather positive note from these large emerging market Leaders with respect to this new global summit instrument:

In this context, we believe that the primary role of the G20 as premier forum for international economic cooperation at this juncture is to facilitate enhanced macroeconomic policy coordination, to enable global economic recovery and secure financial stability, including through an improved international monetary and financial architecture. We approach the next G20 Summit in Mexico with commitment to work with the Presidency, all members and the international community to achieve positive results, consistent with national policy frameworks, to ensure strong, sustainable ans balanced growth.

But there are more than a few paragraphs that constitute – well carping by the BRICS Leaders of the influence and direction promoted by the traditional states. There is frustration at the “loose” monetary policy of more than a few traditional power central banks. There is almost exasperation at the slow pace of quota and governance reform at the IMF and the World Bank. There is annoyance at the effort by the US to appoint yet again the new head of the World Bank rather than opening up the choice to a wider range of applicants including those from the BRICS countries. In these sections there is more than a hint of oppositional leadership to the influence and leadership of the global economy by the traditional G7 countries.

When one looks to collective outputs one is not particularly “bowled over” by collective actions. There is discussion of intra-bloc trade using local currencies – which may only impede fully currency convertibility for a number of these states including China – and investigation of a new development bank facility. Other than that there is a significant listing of ministerial gathers, finance, trade, science and technology and health ministers, etc. – see in particular the Delhi Action Plan – but it is rather obscure as to what the goals for such meetings are. While such gatherings might be helpful, one assumes that G20 ministerial meetings might be even more useful for such ministers and the need to hold both might well run these ministers ragged.

The dilemma at first blush is whether the BRICS see themselves as a a “bloc” – potentially an oppositional bloc – that stands apart from the G7 and criticizes their efforts to bring reform – and potentially blocking coordination and reform. Such a creation could well be harmful in an already challenged global governance regime. On the other hand a caucus where ideas can be vetted but where coordination and decision making occurs at other leadership settings with traditional players, newly energized middle powers and developing countries – well that might prove a useful coalition.

Meanwhile the challenges posed by global governance continue – BRICS or no BRICS.

Image Credit: AFP

Taking the Good and the Bad with Global Summitry

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Alan Alexandroff

For the second time in as many years global leaders are gathering to discuss nuclear issues. Once again, over 40 leaders are sitting down – on this occasion in Seoul – to discuss nuclear security. From the outside, however, it certainly seems as though the global public would not be blamed for wondering what this summit is in fact all about.

The early images being transmitted from Seoul largely cover the visit of a forceful US President Obama – I mean this is a US election year – in his first foray to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). This demarcation between the Republic of Korea – South Korea to most of us – and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) – North Korea was established with the truce that ended the Korean conflict – though failed to reach a permanent peace agreement.

In addition the President has signaled that China needs to examine what it has said or is about to say to the DPRK leadership over the recent announcement from North Korea that it intends to launch a ballistic missile carrying a satellite into orbit in just a few weeks. The announcement has caused consternation and significantly raised tensions in East Asia. It has put the recent US-DPRK agreement on nuclear restraint in return for food shipments in question. According to news reports Obama has publicly urged China to use its influence to rein in North Korea instead of “turning a blind eye” to the DPRKs nuclear program.

Is this summit then about the question of nuclear nonproliferation and the threat that North Korea – and yes Iran – pose to the spread of nuclear weapons and the increase in the number of Nuclear Weapons States (NWS). Well – no!

Is it then about the consequences of the peaceful uses of nuclear power? Since the last Summit – Washington 2010 – the global public was witness to the devastating triple disaster at Fukushima Japan – first an earthquake, then a tsunami and then a nuclear meltdown at the nuclear power plant. This meltdown – the worst since Chernobyl – has contaminated – for years into the future – a wide swath of northeastern Japan. It appears that Japan’s Prime Minister Noda is likely to speak to the gathered leaders on lessons learned from the disaster and possible changes to emergency preparedness.

Is this a summit then called to deal with “nuclear safety” issues – the term experts use to describe the area focused on the peaceful uses of nuclear power? ‘Fraid not. This is not a Summit dedicated to the issues of nuclear safety!

No, in fact this Summit of world leaders is tackling once again nuclear security – an experts’ term which in this case means reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism, and preventing terrorists, criminals, or other unauthorized actors from acquiring nuclear materials. Nuclear terrorism continues to be a significant and most security experts would suggest a real threat to the security of states in the global arena. The President called together leaders in 2010 to work towards locking down loose nuclear materials – a challenging threat to international security. As the US President saw it, reining in this threat required strong national measures and significant international collaboration. Any successful use of nuclear material by terrorists or criminals or others could have a devastating impact on publics around the globe – politically, economically, socially, and psychologically.

As suggested by two nuclear security experts, Kenneth Brill and Kenneth Luongo in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times:

Obama’s initiative in launching the nuclear summit process in Washington in 2010 helped focus high-level attention on nuclear security issues. Unfortunately, the actions produced by the 2010 Washington Summit and that are planned for the upcoming Seoul Summit are voluntary actions that are useful, but not sufficient to create an effective global nuclear security regime.

There it is – nuclear security – ending the threat of terrorists or others obtaining nuclear materials and threatening and then possibly using a nuclear device against innocent populations. An important and critical issue that President Obama has taken the lead in organizing and then working with many other leaders developing a program to secure nuclear materials by the global community. It sounds fantastic. Then why the hint of dismay from the nuclear experts. Indeed the article by Brill and Luongo suggest less than universal support for the outcomes of the summit.

The article in fact points to growing concern from experts on the efforts at this global summit – indeed there are many experts that don’t want the summits to continue after 2014 for fear that leaders will “kick the can” of nuclear down the road yet again.

On the face of it the chorus of concern from advocates and experts seems somewhat strange given that that the leaders have come together twice in two years to address loose nuclear materials. And indeed experts suggest that over 80 percent of the commitments identified in Washington have been accomplished. But the concern is the summits have committed states to far too limited a program – and worse. Once again Brill and Luongo:

The world cannot afford to wait for the patchwork of nuclear security arrangements to fail before they are strengthened. Instead, we need a system based on a global framework convention on nuclear security that would fill the gaps in existing voluntary arrangements. This framework convention would commit states to an effective standard of nuclear security practices, incorporate relevant existing international agreements, and give the IAEA the mandate to support nuclear security by evaluating whether states are meeting their nuclear security obligations and providing assistance to those states that need help in doing so.

And there is no question that in the arena of nuclear security there is plethora of conventions, mandates, organizations and institutions that festoon the nuclear security landscape. It is like an enormous alphabet soup. And maybe a singular universal and “hard law” treaty might be the solution as the experts suggest. But then again too many place too much weight in international relations on international law and obligations. And while voluntary standards may be less than ideal, experts could certainly provide a list of priority risks and priority countries that the summit could focus on for the next two year cycle. That would at least help to focus global attention.

And as for a summit going “off agenda” – there will never be a means to hold leaders to a defined agenda. But this summit seems to me to be more – significantly more – than a photo-op – which is generally the knock on global summits. And if Obama uses this to press forward on the DPRK – and possibly Iran – because he is able to sit down with President Hu Jintao – then we can take the advance in this area and redouble our efforts toward 2014 and the next Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands. Half a cake – is – as they say – far better than no cake at all. So with summits.

Image Credit: Official logo of the 2012 Korean Nuclear Security Summit

Distractions, Distractions Distractions … Can Mexico Get the G20 Agenda Back on Track

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Alan Alexandroff

Mexico faces a very large task. Actually Mexican officials face two rather daunting tasks. The first is to persuade G20 officials and indeed G2o Leaders that notwithstanding the crisis of the day, they must keep “front-and-center” the longer term tasks and objectives that put the G20 Leaders at the ‘high table’ in the first place. Through the immediate crises – most evidently the sovereign debt crisis in Europe – and the constant “pulling and hauling” to widen the agenda this way and that, the G20 Leaders Summit needs to construct an agenda and implement policy that secures measurable economic and financial reform.

The second, and even harder, task is to bring Leaders face-to-face with their own unwillingness to grasp the domestic political nettle. As an aside, officials need to alert media and experts to real failure of the G20 – political failure not at the international level but at the national level. The current failure is not a product so much of weak international institutions, a favorite subject of media and experts, but failing national leadership.

Now it may be unfair to call the European debt crisis – a distraction – for the contagion from an unstructured Greek default, or worse a number of Eurozone countries and the likely liquidity crisis that would spread quickly through global economy – is not an event happy to contemplate. But G20 Leaders need to resist “my crisis is your crisis” mentality that markets and Europe promote. In part this is “passing the buck” and at the recent Finance Ministers meeting it was clear that many countries – including, the US, UK, Canada and others were saying – you have to save yourself first – notably Germany – then we can consider wider support. It is a tug-of-war but meanwhile the G20 is “stuck” with this crisis that continues to crowd out needed longer term discussions of Strong Sustainable and Balanced Growth (SSBG) in all its myriad policy direction.

And then there is the need to address the host’s agenda. Stewart Patrick at the Council on Foreign Relations, freshly returned from Mexico’s gathering – the Think-20 – has sketched in his blog, The Internationalist, many of the interests Mexico brings to the G20 Table. Now this in the end may not be the agenda when the G20 Leaders meet in Los Cabos but much of this is promoted by Mexico. Mexico has pressed to promote “green growth” but it is not clear what that is and whether Leaders have a clear roadmap for incremental policy action. And food security has appeared as well. Like green growth food security is a worthy subject but it was there with the French leadership. Now Stewart notes that vice-ministers of agriculture plan to meet in April and May but he suggests that food security needs to be “bounced up” to Leaders. I think there is more than enough that needs to be addressed in the already created Action Plan. Governments need to take action to implement. Ministers get it done!

Now with respect to the SSBG framework and Leaders actions. Recently Uri Dadush of te Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Kati Suominen of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (in fact the article can be found at the GMF website) wrote an article called “Is There Life for the G20 beyond the Global FInancial Crisis?” The authors tackle both the G20 agenda and where is the failure. Dadush and Suominen examining the volatile G20 agenda

Instead, the G20 countries, which together account for the vast majority of the ownership and voting power in the major global institutions, should focus only on the big picture and look to those institutions to translate the G20-designed strategy into explicit decisions – in other words, to find a technically and politically palatable way to execute and enforce the G20’s vision. This is the role – the role of the steering committee – that the G20 needs to continue carving out.

Now my colleague Dan Drezner (you can always catch him at Foreign Policy) has on a number of occasions – including with colleagues from SIIS, the Munk School, the Stanley Foundation, KDI and others at a conference in Shanghai – characterized the effort to “coordinate” global imbalances as “Mission Impossible”. But the economic framework of the G20 – the SSBG framework – requires the amelioration of global imbalances among the G20. That is the task. And as Dadush and Suominen recognize

Unsurprisingly, the G20 has thus far had little success in agreeing on a roadmap to effectively deal with global imbalances, and has also failed to set a clear goal for its efforts.

Moreover they point out that such coordination can only occur with the concurrence of domestic interests and then policy reform at the national level – but it would appear that Leaders are unwilling – or unable – to alter what these two authors describe as the “drivers of the imbalances”. Thus, China has yet to alter its export-driven domestic economy, notwithstanding the repeated rhetoric of China shifting to domestic consumption. Nor has the United States found a policy path to reduce its near “out-of-control” deficit and growing debt. And these are but two of a number of countries in the G20.

Global imbalances policy is a classic instance of all politics being local – but in this instance we are not describing purely domestic policy but the interaction of national policy with international coordination. But let’s be clear: this unwillingness to alter the domestic political equation and revise national economic policy is not a failure, on its face, of the G20 Leaders Summit – the informal ‘high table’ of global governance – but the failure of leadership to undertake the tough political decisions at home. The weakness is political leadership at home not at summit structures. Again as Dadush and Suominen point out:

While coordination failures are ancillary to the main problem – that resolution to issues facing the G20 often requires painful domestic reforms – they risk becoming means to deflect attention from the domestic reforms that are so badly needed.

So keeping the agenda on SSBG target, and cajoling G20 Leaders to take action at home – that is the real Mexican agenda

Image Credit: Government of Mexico

“After You Alphonse” – The G20 and Building a “Firewall” Against Eurozone Contagion

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Alan Alexandroff

G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bankers have wrapped up their meeting in Mexico.

So what’s the result?

Well the battle has not yet been won to create a significant enough “firewall” to calm the markets and assure them that contagion will not spread beyond Europe.

But it appears to be coming.

The heart of the issue is Germany’s reluctance to add to the bailout fund that had been created – Europe had first built a temporary fund – the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) and then subsequently created a permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM). That combination would total about 750 billion euros. But Germany is not yet ready to do that. And the G20 – or at least many of the G20 countries – are not prepared to augment the IMF support standing around $358 billion by some $500 to $600 billion – until Europe makes a greater contribution.

The G20 countries have pressed Europe (see the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bankers Communique) – that means principally Germany in this case – to increase the European contribution. It is still unclear whether Germany is prepared to commit – it would appear not to be by next week at the European Summit set for March 1 – 2nd.

Where do the G20 countries stand – and why? Most critical in this discussion is Germany. And Germany has resisted – and continues to resist though apparently less vociferously the enlargement of the Eurozone’s bailout fund.

Germany appears, in part, to be playing for time. The German Government faces a crucial vote in its legislature on Monday – a vote to accept a second rescue package. – As a bit of an aside the Netherlands and Finland also face legislative approval in the coming week. It also seems that the German government is playing for time to see if the Greek government will be successful in swapping Greek debt held by banks and other investors that propose a significant reduction in the face value of the debt, or drawn out maturity and/or rate reductions – or all three. And the Merkel government is all too aware that German public opinion is strongly opposed to to further bailout actions for Greece. In fact in a poll released today, Sunday, by Bild am Sonntag (quoted in Reuters) showed that 62 percent of Germans oppose further aid for Greece. Thus, the German government for the moment continues to insist that an enlarged firewall may cause governments to ease up on their fiscal austerity measures and additional economic reform. The strongest views from the German government continues to argue that the ESM is sufficient as it is. In the meantime, however, Greece, Ireland and Portugal are locked out of debt markets.

Most of the G20 countries – developed and large emerging markets alike – have urged Europe to take further steps to reduce the risk of contagion. A number of developed countries such as the UK and Japan are prepared to raise further IMF support along with a number of developing and large emerging market countries, most insist that will not act without further actions by Europe. And the United States has both urged greater European actions but has also made clear that it will not contribute in any instance to the enlargement of the IMF package.

So it is unclear today whether Europe will enlarge the bailout at the March EU Summit or that a complete package – somewhere near $2 trillion including European and IMF funds – will be ready or concluded by the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bankers when they meet again toward the end of April. But we can see that the G20 Ministers and Central Bankers meeting has been important in trying to construct a bailout package. Furthermore in looking at the comments of the ministers and central bankers there is not a simple divide between developed and large emerging market states and developing countries.

Speculation over the legitimacy of the G20 continues apace. But the legitimacy focus is ill placed (see the Reuters blog – “The Great Debate” and the article by Terra Lawson-Remer, february 24, 2012) . The current troubles in constructing a bailout package reflect popular and legislative opposition in a number of countries – Germany most notably – but in other European countries as well and in the United States. This is not a G20 legitimacy debate at all; it is a political battle in the domestic and international contexts. That fact that executives and their officials cannot act without calculating legislative dis/approval is not new – remember the “failure” of the Kennedy Round in the US Congress. But this says next to nothing about G20 legitimacy. What it reflects is that global economic negotiating, indeed almost any international negotiating – as we were told long ago by Harvard’s Robert Putnam – requires officials to negotiate in two ways – across the table with other leaders and officials, and backwards and over their shoulders with the legislators and broader publics of the country. The “high table” of international economic negotiations has never been leaders and officials divorced from domestic politics. And it isn’t now.

Image Credit: Chris Skinner – Financial Services Club Blog

Tackling ‘Peace and Security’ at the G20 – Sort of

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Alan Alexandroff

This weekend a number of these foreign ministers – most notably United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Germany’s Guido Westerwelle – will convene at the invitation of Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa in Los Cabos Mexico (in June the G20 Leaders Summit will meet at Los Cabos). – For the first time these ministers gather under the G20 umbrella to discuss – at least in principal – “foreign and security” policy.

Is this then the final grand leap of the G20? Will the Leaders Summit now include a full global summitry agenda economic, financial, peace and security? Will G20 Leaders gather to tackle economic and financial regulatory reform and securities crises as well?

Well – not exactly.

Among the G20 there has always been tension, if not outright contention, over the scope of the Leaders Summit agenda. While some G8 countries have urged tackling at least questions on nuclear non-proliferation, or crisis management and resolution, others, notably non G8 countries such as China and Brazil have resisted any extension which would bring peace and security issues to the G20 agenda and remove it from the UN Security Council. As Bruce Jones Director of “Managing Global Order Project” at the Brookings Institution declared

What is left behind is foreign and security policy … In this regard, the G-20 foreign ministers meeting in Los Cabos represents the first real opportunity we’ve had to begin that work.

Bruce has gathered a number of experts and former ministers from around the G20 to reflect on this upcoming meeting at the Brookings Institution website. In general Bruce and his colleagues support the calling of this meeting. Among those is Celso Amorim, former Foreign Minister of Brazil, who writes:

Without exaggerating the scope of the changes that may begin with the February meeting of Foreign Ministers in Mexico, one is allowed to hope that it can at least initiate a process which someday will impact on the formal institutions that deal with political and security matters. In order that such a process may take place, it is essential that the FM meeting focuses on concrete questions – such as the ones mentioned here [Arab Spring, the Iranian nuclear program, a broader-based approach to Africa] – and does not lose much time and energy on more abstract issues of institutional nature Nor should it bother too much with other subjects – important as they may be – which have already found an appropriate locus for debate, such as climate change.

So support for sure, but also demands for greater precision as well on the agenda. And the reality matches the commentary. Clearly there was no unanimity on the need – desire for – this meeting. The Mexican foreign minister, the host, has made clear this meeting is “informal” and not a Summit – meaning no summit declaration. In addition 8 countries have not sent foreign ministers but rather lower ranking officials including France, China, Brazil and India.

So it appears that there are a number of questions that ‘dog’ the question of G20 foreign ministers meetings. Key among those is the agenda. The Mexican foreign minister has suggested that the meeting will tackle “pressing issues” including food safety, strengthening the rule of law and providing efficient and coherent leadership to tackle global challenges. He also made clear that the the group would discuss but rule out statements on critical crisis issues such as Syria. So less on crisis management – at least formally – and more on issues that Lee Dong-hwi of IFANS in Korea, another of the Brookings invited experts, calls “hybrid issues” – issues where economic and security issues are inextricably linked. This indeed may be the incremental way to extend the agenda to more “peace and security-like” issues. But food security and climate change might best be discussed by others – rather than the foreign ministers. The foreign ministers after all represent a more traditional conception of diplomacy. Once foreign ministers were the only officials that dealt with international matters in global settings. But that is long gone.

In the “Iceberg Theory” of global summitry (see my June 2011 blog post “The Iceberg Theory of Global Governance – Seeing it Work”), of which I am a strong advocate, obviously, significant ministerial, working party and transgovernmental regulatory networks (TRNs) including a wide variety of intergovernmental, ministerial, regulatory and administrative institutions, are tasked – by Leaders and Ministers – with developing standards and policy reforms that then need to be implemented by national authorities. Leaders Summits are but the “tip of the iceberg” of global summitry.

So, it is not at all clear that foreign ministers are the best at dealing with many of these not really policy subjects for foreign ministers. But if it is “crisis management” that will occupy the agenda, then the China’s, Brazil’s and others will insist that the discussions need to be at the UNSC.

Nevertheless it may be that the foreign ministers may best tackle crisis prevention matters and at least publicly limit, at least for the moment, the immediate crisis situations – though it is a setting where at least countries avoid the distorting impact of the “all mighty Security Council veto”. And I think Bruce Jones has picked up on this crisis prevention agenda and the “speak softly approach” for crisis management:

Far more important is relationship building, building shared perspectives on key security issues, nd an informal space for back room negotiations. I suspect that Secretary Clinton will use quite a lot of her time in Los Cabos cornering her Chinese and Russian colleagues on the Syria question – and that’s very much to the good.

So let’s urge a crisis prevention approach and a discussion of current security crises – even if those aspects of the discussion are left to the back room for now.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Steve Clemons and the Revisionist Liberal American Foreign Policy Voice

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Alan Alexandroff

So returning to Steve Clemons’s and his review of grand strategy approaches in the Atlantic with his “Rebuilding America’s Stock of Power” which itself is a lead in for Steve to lead an Atlantic Live session that will be streamed live on January 11th. Well, I hope to get there but meanwhile let me attempt a partial review of Steve and his review of various ‘in the beltway’ types in the most recent issue (Issue 23, Winter 2012) of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Steve has an outsized personality that is a Washington and New York presence. Now Steve is a realist – a ‘happy realist’ – but a realist nevertheless. The ‘bug-a-boo’ for Steve is the rise of China. As Steve points to:

China is driving realities in the global economic sphere today; not the United States – and America, to revive its economy, needs to figure out how to drive Chinese-held dollars (along with German and Arab state held reserves) into productive capacity inside the United States while not giving away everything.

America must knock back Chinese predatory behaviors by becoming more shrewdly predatory and defensive of America’s core economic capacities. Without a shift in America’s economic stewardship – which also means a shift in the macro-focused, neoliberal oriented, market fundamentalist staff of the current Obama team – the US economy will flounder and on a relative basis, sink compared to the rise of the rest.

For these experts, and for Steve I suspect, it is all about finding restraint in a new US grand strategy. With the end of the Iraq War for the US and a growing intensity to end their military involvement in Afghanistan, there is a loud and growing chorus of voices in Washington to husband US resources. Turn down the urge to go abroad to slay dragons. The attack is on against unrestrained US interventionism which Steve argues is, as he calls it, “the dominant personality” of both US political parties. So for the Democrats you have the humanitarian interventionists – read that as Libya – and for the Republicans you have the neoconservatives’ regime change – read that as Iraq. The critique from Steve:

Neoconservatives and liberal interventionists put a premium on morality, on reacting and moving in the world along lines determined by an emotional and sentimental commitment to the basic human rights of other citizens – with little regard to the stock of means and resources the US has to achieve the great moral ends they seek.

So restraint and husbanding resources – economic and military – is the new objective. And each of the experts, in their own way, urge it. Thus Charlie Kupchan declares that in order to rebuild American leadership the US must:

restore the American consensus on foreign policy and the rebuilding of its economy;
work with the newly emerging market powers to create a new global order and protect a liberal international order;
revitalize the transatlantic relationship; and then
judiciously retrench and deal with the overextension of US global commitments.

In a similar vein a quick look at this recent press release at the CFR website for Richard Betts’s new book entitled, American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security, Betts too recommends, “the United States exercise greater caution and restraint, using force less frequently (“stay out”) but more decisively (“all-in”)”.

Bruce Jentleson performs a reprise of his and Steve Weber’s approach in The End of Arrogance. In the journal article Bruce narrates a Ptolemaic versus Copernican world, where the central image is the displacement of the US from the center of the universe. Now contrary to more realist interpretations, this diffusion of power as described by Bruce, anticipates that China too – the new rising power – will be unable to exert hegemonic power in this new 21st century global system. As Jentleson declares,”Peaceful rise is one thing, assertive dominance quite another.” The Copernican world, according to Jentleson, is a disorderly place, but a global order that, “… means demonstrating the capacity to implement policies that reduce our vulnerabilities, enhance our competitiveness, and cultivate a shared sense of purpose.”

Diffusion of power, the end of hegemony or at least the enlargement of leadership with the inclusion of the rising powers like Brazil, India and China, and a requirement that the United States husband its resources – economic and military.

Steve argues that he holds a line similar to the Kupchan approach though he criticizes Kupchan for holding to such neatly drawn pillars of action for the US. But it seems to me that constraint has been the mantra of the US before – back to the 1970’s and the end of Vietnam. It is not a strategy and it is apt to be forgotten, or ignored, by a new political leadership especially across the political divide that exists in the US. The dilemma that exists today is not a search to enunciate some new grand strategy, but an effort, and here I tend to agree with Bruce Jentleson, to ‘lead’ in initiating collective behavior – the impetus for collective action. And there needs to be a concerted to avoid the China Threat syndrome that is embedded in Washington. Restraint will evaporate unless US policy makers find a way to open a political space for China. This is the overwhelming need in US foreign policy. In the coming years, according to the review of Richard Betts’s book

China is the main potential problem because it poses a choice Americans are reluctant to face. Washington can strive to control the strategic equation in Asia, or it can reduce the odds of conflict with China. But it will be a historically unusual achievement if it manages to do both,” notes Betts. Although conflict with China is not inevitable, “the United States is more likely to go to war with China than with any other major power.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Not For Me! No Yearend Predictions

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Alan Alexandroff

Though I appreciated all the list of international relations 2011 horrors – or the 2012 predicted horrors, I shall avoid the feeble speculation indulged in by many of blog colleagues. No crystal ball for me.

Instead I shall look at two approaches – both designated as part of US grand strategy. The first is a series of articles brought together by my good friend Steve Clemons, the Washington Editor of the Atlantic in a piece called “Rebuilding America’s Stock of Power“. In this piece – besides bringing his own unique insights to American foreign policy, Clemons responds to various Washington beltway folk including Charlie Kupchan from Georgetown University, Rosa Brooks of the Georgetown University and Law Center and the New America Foundation, Rachael Kleinfeld of the Truman National Security Project, Tom Perriello a former Virginia Congressman and Duke University Professor, Bruce Jentleson.

The second grand strategy analysis will focus on the concept of “offshore balancing” and I shall use Steven Walt of Harvard University has the locus for this examination of a long established international relations perspective that has come back into vogue as the United States struggles to deal with the the end of one conflict – Iraq, the almost end of another – Afghanistan, and the emergence possibly of another – the Rise of China.

Stay tuned.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Asia Pacific Leadership – So Crowded – A Scorecard to Tell the Players Apart

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Alan Alexandroff

Global summitry was on full display at the early part of the week. It is again as the week ends. Many of the Leaders who had just been to the G20 Leaders Summit at Cannes basically turned around and headed to Honolulu for the 19th Leaders Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting. And by the end of this week a number of these same leaders have gathered again in Bali for the 6th East Asia Summit (EAS). This Bali gathering is notable for including for the first time the President of the United States and the President of Russia thus making it a first time meeting of 18 leaders. As a final gesture of global summitry, the US President stopped on his way to Bail in Australia for a long postponed state visit by this President to the continent.

With the US (re)engagement in the Asia Pacific – more on that in our next blog post – we saw significant attention placed by the President on the APEC meeting – it is his sorta home state – except for Illinois of course – which is other home state. President Obama spent some time touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) framework – a next-generation trade and investment agreement, as the APEC Leaders have referred to it, including currently nine Asian and Pacific countries and the new/old attention paid to joining these negotiations by the Prime Ministers of Japan and Canada and the President of Mexico.

APEC is an unusual organization that was first proposed by Australia in the late 1980s. The 21 current members represent separate economies which allows Chinese Taipei – Taiwan and Hong Kong to members though they are not states or not readily acknowledged ones (it is one of the few organizations where both Taiwan and China are members) The US organized the first Leaders level meeting (note Taiwan sends a ministerial level official) in 1993.

In the Honolulu Declaration, the communique ending the leaders’ meeting, the countries repeated the voluntary trade liberalization mantra of this forum: trade and investment liberalization, business facilitation and economic and technical cooperation:

APEC’s core mission continues to be further integration of our economies and expansion of trade among us. We come together in APEC to pursue these goals, recognizing that trade and investment are critical to job creation and greater economic prosperity for all our economies. We further recognize that strengthening regional economic integration also plays a key role in promoting regional peace and stability.

The reliance on consensus and voluntarism has always raised questions over the effectiveness of the organization. These limitations remain to this day.

The EAS is a leaders summit that focuses on regional trade but also security issues. The first leaders’ meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005 and is held always at the conclusion of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders’ meetings. Thus President Obama is holding bilaterals as The ASEAN leadership meets today in Bali. ASEAN includes the core 10 countries of southeast Asia and is committed to the acceleration of economic growth, social progress, cultural development among its members, the protection of regional peace and stability, and to providing opportunities for member countries to discuss differences peacefully. It is the core institution for Southeast Asia containing not only the economically vibrant members such as Singapore and Malaysia and newly vibrant Vietnam but also the large and now G20 member Indonesia. The EAS was promoted by ASEAN plus three – the three being China, Japan and Korea – though there is confusion over whether members prefer the ASEAN plus three or the EAS.

In any case it would appears that this year’s EAS meeting will follow up on trade and investment liberalization discussed at APEC but additionally add discussion on making the region a nuclear free zone, easing tensions on the Korean peninsula and continuing efforts to develop a code of conduct acceptable to all states to facilitate disputes in the South China Sea. The latter will very likely raise serious hackles among China officials where they have insisted that they do not wish discuss these matters and insist on resolving South China Sea disputes bilaterally and not – as the US and others insist – on a multilateral – basis.

The multiplicity of regional organizations in the Asia Pacific is striking. As international legal scholar Sungjoon Cho of Chicago-Kent College of Law wrote some years in his examination of APEC (“Making A Better Dispute Settlement Mechanism for Regional Trade Agreements: Lessons of Integration Efforts in East Asia” in Mitsuo Matsushita & Dukgeun Ahn (Cameron May: London, 2004):

This region is characterized by deeply rooted heterogeneity or, to use a more benign term, “diversity”. As a result it lacks the glue of homogeneity needed to bond different states together to create a formal institution. First the existence of many states in this region is based on ethnic identity. The different countries speak different languages. Their cultural underpinnings – customs, ways of life and thinking and moral system – are quite different. Their religions also vary. Second, colonial experiences in some states may have politically blocked formal institutionalization in this region. Third, the lack of a single dominant leadership, in particular after the Cold War, may explain the difficulty of forming an official regional arrangement. Fourth, the payoff matrix, geopolitical or economic, of Asia Pacific states may in fact be too complex to bind them with a single formal tie.

So where do the countries go with this summitry spaghetti. Tan See Seng, the deputy director and head of research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies Nanyang Technological University Singapore in his post for RSIS Commentaries entitled “Visions at War? EAS in the Regional Architecture Debate” argues that there are three contending summitry models in Asia. The first, what he refers to as the “Canberra School” model promotes a “command” or centralized brand of regionalism – an overarching institution. Australia’s former Prime Minister and currently the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd, promoted what he called Asia-Pacific Community model (I was fortunate enough to attend the Sydney gathering in 2009 where Australia pushed for the creation of the APc). Many of the smaller countries especially Singapore but also Vietnam and Cambodia expressed strong reservations over the creation of the this large institution. Many representatives saw this institution as a threat to ASEAN and its continued existence. While the initiative did pose a threat to the continued influence of the small states in Asia the primary purpose was to create an overarching security community – to date no such institution exists in Asia. The Australian hope was to create under one umbrella a security community that could act as a platform for dialogue and discussion for China, US, India and the other powers in the region. But for the time being – that initiative is not possible.

The second approach referenced by Tan See Seng was what he called the “Washington School”. This approach promotes a functional or results-based approach to regional governance. The US calls for effectiveness and suggests ending the functional overlap that currently exists in the summitry in Asia. Thus the ASEAN+3 and all of the ASEAN plus organizations should work on trade and investment liberalization while the EAS focuses on security.

Finally Tan See Seng identifies the “Singapore School”. This approach accepts the current system – in particular acknowledging the centrality of the ASEAN – in other words the small country core of Asian regionalism – and promotes the continuation even augmentation of the institutional system of ASEAN + settings. It permits the continuing membership diversity.

Whatever the future the Summitry diversity is a reality for now. The burning question is: can these institutional settings help US-China manage their relations in Asia? Or is all this beside the point.