Colin Bradford is a senior fellow at CIGI and at the Brookings Institution.

Broader Agenda - Broader Engagement

Unlike the G20 London Summit, the G8 Summit in Italy took on a host of other issues beyond the economic crisis, and in fact made more progress on those than on the economic crisis itself, which continues to be the front burner issue, even if there is nothing much more which requires head of state decision right now.  In our Summit Soundings on the G20 London Summit one of the issues that seemed to emerge was that leaders who engaged across the broad spectrum of economic issues cut a higher profile at home and seemed to advance national interests at the G20 Summit more than those who specialized in a single issue.  What the G8 Summit in L'Aquila seems to have shown is that summits which embrace a broader range of issues demonstrate greater global leadership than those which limit themselves to a single issue.

President Obama was seen in the American press to be actively involved in promoting a shift from food aid to investment in agriculture in poorer countries, progress on climate change negotiations, breaking the trade deadlock by working with newly re-elected Indian prime minister Singh on greater flexibility on tariff cushions against sugar and cotton import surges opening the way toward a renewal of the Doha trade round, as well Iran, nuclear proliferation and aid to Africa. In April the world was looking for global economic leadership.  The G8 Summit, which morphed into a sequence of larger groupings, became an opportunity to demonstrate leadership on a broader range of issues of consequence to national publics of the leaders present but also to global society.

Broader Engagement - Broader Impact

The second day of the three day Italian G8 Summit was dubbed the G8 +5+ 1 (Egypt)+ 5 (Turkey, Australia, Indonesia, and Korea (MEF countries) and Denmark (UNFCCC Chair) summit grouping to discuss climate change, with US president Barack Obama co-chairing the session with Italian host, prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. This session brought into public view the real tensions involved in reaching a global climate change agreement.  Thursday's New York Times' headline read "Poorer Nations Reject Developed Countries' Target on Emission Cut" while the Washington Post ran a headline stating that "Group of 8 Agrees on a Ceiling for Temperature Rise: Broader Carbon Proposal is Rejected." But Obama faced the music directly, stating his understanding that countries had different priorities and politics.  In a breakthrough, he then called on G20 ministers of finance to meet to prepare proposals for financing climate mitigation in the developing world, the real stumbling block, by the time of the Pittsburgh G20 Summit at the end of September.

There is no doubt but what the Post Kyoto climate change framework can not be negotiated by the G8 alone, as both this G8 Summit and the headlines starkly revealed. The Major Emitters Forum G16 are all G20 countries, and only Saudi Arabia and Argentina from the G20 were not present in the expanded G8 Summit in Italy. The broader, ever morphing, groupings present in L'Aquila enabled the climate change issue and others to inch forward. Even though no major decisions were reached, the larger than G8 groupings provided the dynamics necessary for the forward movement.  

G8 Feeder to the G20

So was this eclectic summit of ever-changing constellations of leaders a "three ring circus" as Nina Hachigian suggested, confusing to the aware public?  Or was there clarity despite complexity,  a clear meaning coming through the shifting scenarios?  By and large, it looked as if the Italian effort to keep the G8 at the center of summit dynamics and fudge the issue of who is in charge by morphing the groups could not hide the fact that most observers would agree with the  New York Times' headline on Friday (July10) that read, "Group of 8 Is Not Enough, Say Outsiders Wanting In."  US Sherpa for President Obama, Mike Froman, stated that "We view this meeting and this discussion as a midpoint between the London G20 Summit and the Pittsburgh G20 Summit"  (NYT 7/10/09).  Veteran summit scholar John Kirton said in the same article, "you'll always need the G-8," which is probably also true.

There is little doubt but what for most of the smaller G8 members, the G8 will continue to serve a useful purpose of, among other things, keeping their star bright in the firmament and dealing with transatlantic-trilateral issues of consequence within the circumference of their interactive reach, which is now more circumscribed in a world of rising, new powers than it was in the last half of the last century. But as a global steering committee, this G8 summit proved more clearly than ever that the days of the G8 meeting by itself to deal with global issues is over and that the presence of other powers necessary for global leadership, not a courtesy.

Global Leaders for Global Leadership

Once underway, the Italian G8 Summit appeared from the US to be more coherent than chaotic, more focused than frantic, and more business-like than a PR opportunity. President Hu's absence was highly significant, and visibly important.  But attention shifted to Manmohan Singh and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as representing the big emerging market powers. The ever-effervescent Silvio Berlusconi didn't steal the show as he did in London with his adroit intrusion into a photo with Obama and Medvedev. This time Lula's gift to Obama of a yellow and green Brazilian futbol shirt caught the world's attention on the front page of Friday's FT. Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Angel Merkel were visiblyimportant players but less prominent, curiously, than at the London G20 Summit. While not being overbearing, US President Barack Obama seemed to quietly and gradually emerge as the leader of the emerging constellation of world leaders composed still,and  importantly, of Europe, Japan and Russia, but now also including China, India and Brazil and other EMEs and Australia and Canada. Slowly, steadily, and eclectically a new global steering group is coming forward to provide global leadership. Happily, and to some extent, unexpectedly, the Italian G8 Summit seems to have contributed to and clarified that transition rather than having blurred it.

* This article is unedited.