STEALTH SUMMIT: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING G-7⁽¹⁾

(Washington, D.C.): If lowering the profile and pomp
of G-7 summitry was a goal of the allies in Halifax last
year, such efforts have exceeded all expectations in Lyon
this summer. Indeed, one of the most remarkable elements
of this year’s G-7 gathering is the scant attention the
original economic security agenda received
(i.e., that planned prior to the Saudi bombing),
particularly in the United States. This is ironic at a
moment when we are facing frightening new levels of
geopolitical volatility and fragile international
markets.

Rather than shrink from the most pressing
global challenges of our time and merely tinker on the
margins of existing allied understandings, the
industrialized world clearly requires its leadership to
demonstrate bold and visionary thinking for the 21st
century. Regrettably, there was little evidence
of this in Lyon. One need only contrast current summitry
with, for example, the Williamsburg Summit of 1983, when
momentous alliance decisions were made to deploy Pershing
and cruise missiles in Europe and to follow President
Reagan’s blueprint for global economic recovery. wp=”br1″>

The ‘Critical Dialogue’ That is Really
Needed

Nevertheless, the terrorist bombing of the U.S.
military barracks in Saudi Arabia on the eve of the
summit did serve tragically to underscore the
multiplicity of threats to global markets and our
democratic societies. Although the summit lent fresh
rhetorical support to institutionalizing common
countermeasures to terrorism and deadly proliferation
activities, it did not bridge the profound
philosophical and ideological differences among Europe,
the U.S. and Japan with regard to how to thwart most
effectively the ambitions of rogue states. At
issue in particular are the G-7 members’ conflicting
attitudes about the desirability of “critical
dialogue” versus inflicting economic and other
penalties.

While these differences were not aired in the final
communique, the summit debate over the U.S. Helms-Burton
legislation with regard to Cuba and the proposed D’Amato
legislative initiative targeting Iran and Libya
demonstrated the dearth of genuine leadership on complex
economic security issues.

U.S. congressional measures of this type — designed
to penalize foreign firms and personnel doing certain
types of business with these pariah regimes — reflect
the cumulative frustration of the American people in
seeking an elusive allied consensus on the nexus which
exists between national security and normal commercial
relations. Ultimately, the importance of genuine
security considerations must be given primacy over allied
exports and jobs. Attempts to negate or
ignore this political reality will likely fail. wp=”br1″>

In short, Japan and other nations can expect
to witness an increase in the exercise of U.S. import
controls, and similar measures, to deny offending
companies access to the American marketplace, rather than
a European-oriented consensus to avoid such disruptions
of the international trading and financial systems.

What Was Not on the Summiteers’
Plate

Moreover, the Lyon summit will likely be remembered
for what was not on the agenda, including: 1) How
to contain and, if necessary, neutralize roughly twenty
nations (and, in some cases, their terrorist
surrogates) that are predicted to acquire weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missile delivery systems in the
years ahead; 2) the structuring of credible
allied ballistic missile defense systems (in the
case of the U.S. and Japan, starting with a sea-based,
wide-area anti-missile system employing the Aegis air
defense assets in both of our navies), and; 3) the
forging of detailed allied contingency plans
designed to cushion potentially debilitating collisions
between breaking geopolitical developments and the
delicate global currency and equities markets. wp=”br1″>

Not surprisingly, this summit was rather heavily
influenced by the presidential elections in both the
United States and Russia. For President Clinton, it was
an ideal occasion to flee escalating scandals at home and
assume a statesman-like posture abroad. Although
President Yeltsin chose not to attend the summit, his
Prime Minister and nefarious Foreign Minister pressed
hard to advance the Kremlin’s objectives of full
membership in the G-7, immediate admission to key
international institutions like the World Trade
Organization, and securing still more financial pledges
from allied capitals to defray, in part, Yeltsin’s
reckless election-year promises.

The Bottom Line

One of the primary missions of G-7 sessions is to anticipate
those issues which will likely represent major challenges
to allied unity and leadership for the coming year.
Unfortunately, there is also little indication that such
pre-crisis planning took place in Lyon, with the
exception of a detailed environmental game-plan for next
year. For example, it is rather clear that 1997 will be
“the Year of China.” Chinese heavy-handedness
in the run-up to its 1 July 1997 takeover of Hong Kong,
potential new tensions in the Taiwan Straits, and
possible escalating dangers on the Korean Peninsula will
likely result in a serious disconnect among Tokyo,
Washington and allied capitals concerning appropriate
responses to more belligerent or uncooperative behavior
by Beijing.

It is therefore a missed opportunity that the G-7
neglected to initiate a meaningful dialogue on these and
other prospective destabilizing events, which will almost
surely test both the durability of our alliance structure
and the future usefulness of largely invisible economic
summits like Lyon. It can only be hoped that the next
summit meeting in Denver will display a measure of
leadership that will ensure that it enjoys the measure of
success — in symbolic as well as substantive terms —
that was so evident in the 1983 Williamsburg summit.

– 30 –

1. The arguments made herein were
embodied in an editorial by Casey Chair, Roger W.
Robinson Jr., that appears in today’s edition of Japan’s Yomiuri
Shimbun, the world’s largest circulation newspaper.