END THE G8 CHARADE – WE NEED A G192

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 17 Jul 2009

John Hilary

Institutions such as the G8 and G20 will only ever serve the interests of the few. We need a forum of the many.

Credit to Angela Merkel. Speaking to the German parliament on the eve of this week’s G8 summit, she has dared to say publicly what most of us have known for a long while. The G8 can no longer be the forum in which the future direction of the world economy is set. It is time for a new body with a radically new agenda.

Where Merkel is wrong, however, is to suggest that all we need do is expand the G8 a little so that it becomes the G20. According to her and far too many others, we must just include a few more powerful nations around the table and all can continue as before.

This fails to recognise the fundamental problem with such groupings. It is not just that they are exclusive, invitation-only forums where deals are drawn up behind closed doors. It is the fact that both the G8 and G20 have championed the same free-market fundamentalism that served the interests of their corporate backers but brought the world economy to the brink of collapse. It is the tune that needs changing, not just the band.

The first ever meeting of the G8 was held back in 1975 and involved just six countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and the UK. Even with the subsequent addition of Canada and Russia, the grouping laid no claim to legitimacy. By its own admission, the G8 was always an unapologetic statement of power and self-interest, a members-only club dedicated to preserving the supremacy of the old imperial nations at the rest of the world’s expense.

The decision to turn to the G20 for this April’s London summit was an acknowledgement that we inhabit a new geopolitical landscape. No solutions to the global economic crisis would be possible without involving countries such as China, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. The American century is behind us, and European hegemony a distant memory.

Yet there was no change in direction to go with the change in personnel. There is widespread consensus that the current economic crisis is the direct result of structural imbalances caused by three decades of deregulated free-market capitalism. Yet the G20 chose to stick with precisely the same neoliberal policies that the G8 has backed so assiduously since its first beginnings in the 1970s.

Worse still, the G20 has given even more power to the institutions that have policed the neoliberal world order over the past three decades. As a result of the London summit, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation have all been brought back from the brink of oblivion. The G20 has thrown them a lifeline they never deserved.

An alternative vision is to hand. Developing countries gathering at last month’s UN crisis summit put forward a set of radical proposals for reform of the global economic order. These in turn drew on the recommendations of the Stiglitz commission, including its plan for a new global economic council under the auspices of the UN which could replace the G20.

The link between form and substance is clear. A forum that involves the many is likely to produce policies that serve the many. Institutions such as the G8 and G20 will only ever serve the interests of the few.

Gordon Brown and other G8 leaders snubbed the UN summit. UN diplomats have spoken privately of UK government officials trying to persuade developing countries to downgrade their own representation at the UN conference. The idea of a democratic future at the global level is obviously too hard for our elected representatives to stomach.

It is time to end the G8 charade once and for all. This means going beyond the G20 to a new programme of action and a democratic forum in which to debate the future of our world. In place of the G8 and G20, we need a radical plan for the global economy drawn up and backed by the full membership of the United Nations. Neither the G8 nor G20, but the G192.

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