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April 05, 2009Europe: All Summit, All the Time
Here are a few reactions to the last few days' G20 events in London, Strasbourg and Prague. All translations are mine.
“Que Vive le G20!” hailed French daily Le Monde in an editorial on Friday. Stopping short of declaring a "new world order," the paper does proclaim that
London just killed the G8. It’s this annual summit, between the Americans, Japanese and Europeans, that made a claim to manage somewhat the affairs of the planet, despite being wholly unrepresentative of today’s world. The G20 properly reflects the division of economic power at the beginning of the 21st century: gaining in power, everyday more evident, are giants of the “global south” including China, India and Brazil. Even while excluding Africa, the G20 is more representative than the UN Security Council, the composition of which reflects the balance of power that issued from World War II.”
The left-leaning daily lays the blame for the economic crisis squarely at the feet of the United States, and talks about how U.S. President Obama deals with that perception, using Obama’s maneuverings between the Chinese and the French on the topic of tax havens as an example.
“The episode illustrates the approach Obama employed throughout his first international summit: in the background, almost withdrawn, minding to not focus attention on the American position, even knowing that is the object of scrutiny, above all because the United States is the author of the crisis. The G20 members had enough tact not to make him acknowledge that too much, he said, even if there were smatterings of remarks about “Wall Street” or “this or that bank.”
Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad this morning noted one example of the process and cost of Obama’s negotiating method. Obama spoke with Turkish President Abdullah Gul, seeking to bring Turkey into the fold after the controversial appointment of Danish Premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO’s Secretary General.
The American President Obama spoke with his Turkish colleague Gul (Saturday) morning and guaranteed that the new secretary general would appoint a Turk as one of his undersecretaries-general, said Premier Erdogan, from Ankara. Turkey would also receive more high-level positions at NATO military headquarters.
The Netherlands’ other paper of record, Volkskrant, issued its own note of approval on Rasmussen:
... Rasmussen ... is above all pragmatic. He is intelligent, socially capable, and has an aversion to big theories and intellectual debates: characteristics that make him well-suited to lead an organization like NATO, with its diverse membership.
Italian journalist Enrico Franceschini, writing in his blog on La Repubblica, has a long list of “consequences” of the summit. Among them:
... Multilateralism is back, after eight years during which Bush’s America strove to do everything by itself (with visible military, political and economic results). Not only is a problem that once would have been handled by the G8 now entrusted to some twenty countries and institutions, but the IMF and the World Bank are again in the foreground as agents of any solution ...
... The “ultra-liberal” market is no longer dogma ...
... “Old Europe,” as American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used to dismiss it in the early days of the Iraq war, is not in decline, is still there and continues to matter, with France and Germany as its guiding axis, and everyone acknowledges its weight ...
... China made its debut as a 21st-century power on a world stage. President Hu Jintao dusted off Teddy Roosevelt’s old motto, “Speak softly and carry a big stick;” which in their case is 1.2 billion Chinese and the “hottest” economy on the planet ...
It was a rough weekend for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Or was it? The media mogul-turned-perennial-leader blamed his succession of gaffes over the weekend on ... the Italian media; which he accused of calumny, and wished out loud - very loud - that some form of action could be taken.
“I don’t want to go so far as to talk about direct and harsh actions against certain newspapers and certain protagonists of the press - he told journalists - but I’m tempted to, because this is no way to behave.” To the journalist who asked him what kind of actions could be taken, the premier answered: “Do you think if I tell Italians to no longer watch one channel or another, no-one will listen?”
In his Geopolitique blog, Le Figaro journalist Pierre Rousselin claims that in the space of a few days, Obama will have launched the auspices for a changed transatlantic relationship.
That paper’s reporting, on the other hand, emphasizes, as Le Monde’s, the display of strength by the Franco-German alliance:
“On the political front, the prize of the summit goes, without contest, to the Franco-German leadership, able as it was to impose its will on the final communique: pushing for regulation as precise as possible on financial markets, including international regulation. “It’s beyond what we could have hoped for!” exclaimed Nicolas Sarkozy.
Over in Spain, in the meantime, El Pais previews President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s upcoming encounter with Obama, comparing the meeting to the relationship between former Presidents Bush and Aznar, in order to highlight the very different circumstances between now and six years ago:
Zapatero will never be invited to Obama’s ranch as Bush invited Aznar in February 2003. Because Obama has no ranch, because Zapatero is not his friend, and because the friendship between Bush and Aznar solidified around Bush’s disagreements with the most important European leaders of the era, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder, on the invasion of Iraq. Finally, because Zapatero is not willing to break with Sarkozy and Merkel to draw closer to the White House ...... The Spanish stimulus package amounts to 3.5 percent of GDP, leading its EU counterparts. There were reasons to side with Obama in demanding more effort from the former. Zapatero preferred to side with France and Germany’s position that the effects of current stimulus efforts should bear themselves out before more are attempted.
Another reason Zapatero isn’t leaping to the American position, of course, is the strain put on the relationship between the two countries during the Bush years: just one of many tears that must be mended. They get their first chance at 3 p.m. today. Zapatero presented today the EU’s foreign policy priorities to Obama during the pair’s first formal meeting.
Joel Weickgenant is a freelance journalist, photographer and blogger. His work can be read and viewed at http://weickgenant.com.
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