Observers of global summitry recognize how difficult it is “kill off” a summitry settings.  In 2009 when the United States was eager to promote the newly minted permanent “high table” of economic global governance – the G20 Leaders Summit – there were whispers – unnamed official sources –  that the US was encouraging the “fading away” of the G7/8.

Two problems with that scenario appeared.  First, a number of the “smaller” members of the club – Japan, Italy and Canada – clung to the decades-old G7.  They declared it more informal and intimate in contrast to the  stiffness and formality of the new club.  And the G7 was a setting where these less powerful members held greater sway.  Look at poor Japan.  In the G7 Japan was the only Asian country; but in the G20 Japan was but one of 6 (and yes I do include Australia in this Asian grouping).

The second problem was quick to appear as well.  Notwithstanding early Administration enthusiasm for the enlarged group that now included China, Brazil and India, it proveed to be very heavy lifting to move to consensus and agreement in the enlarged high table of global governance.  Look at the protracted discussion over global imbalances.  American officials began to back away from their earlier enthusiasm and determined regicide and began to suggest a rather more a la carte approach to global summitry – looking at the forum likely to achieve forward movement and to favor that gathering for the specific goal.

So the G7/8 didn’t go away and there was frequent reference to the warm like mindedness that the G7 at least represented.  Here was a club with similar norms and values that could focus on a goal and achieve forward progress in overcoming the collective action problem that plagues global governance.

Well, how’s that view holding up?  Not so well.  So, there we were with about as intimate and informal a setting as you could achieve – Camp David – and what we got was – very little.  And why.  Well, there was deep contention between Germany and the rest over the question of the resolution of the eurozone crisis.  The officials struggled long into the night but the Camp David Declaration failed to deliver.  No agenda – no targets – but strong rhetoric “Our imperative is to promote growth and jobs” and:

Against this background, we commit to take all necessary steps to strengthen and reinvigorate our economies and combat financial stress, recognizing that the right measures are not the same for each of us.

Read that as  – We agree to disagree over growth and austerity.   And as the Multilateralist, David Bosco, chronicled recently in his post “Can the Obama administration get the G8 back to basics?” the US sherpa, Michael Froman turned the agenda in to a grab bag of global governance issues:

But Froman then proceeded to outline an agenda that included a remarkable number of things under the sun, including Syria, Iran, Burma, Afghanistan, energy security, the Eurozone crisis, the Arab Spring, and food security. The scattershot agenda is a reminder of how much the forum has changed from its original economic focus.

So the “like-minded”  – what a number of the original G7 had pinpointed as a peculiarly relevant aspect of this gathering – failed to prove its value.  Sorry global summitry is hard! And whether states are democratic or not provides no guarantee of achieving success.  It remains unclear what the G7 forum, let alone the G8, is all about other than a caucus of states drawn from the larger G20. It might then make greater sense to hold this meeting at an extended meeting time of the G20 – two days plus – rather than one for the G20.  And eliminate the separate time for the G8.  Global Summitry is too precious to squander – like-mindedness or not.

Image Credit: Xinhua/AFP – G8 Summit