Stability. Order. Security. That is what these big multinational summits are meant to project. They are designed to reassure the lower orders (that’s you, me and a few billion others), that Planet Earth is in safe hands as it hurtles around the sun at 66,000 miles per hour.
I am not reassured. In fact, a look at the G20 Hamburg line-up has left me seriously worried.
North Korea now has an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, nuclear weapons and a juvenile dictator with a bad haircut. But Russia, China and America cannot agree on how to deal with him.
Russia, the United States and its allies are on the cusp of coming to blows over Syria and Ukraine. India and China are the same over their border at the rooftop of the world.
Then there is China against everyone over the South and East China seas. Saudi Arabia is trying to squeeze Qatar into submission and under attack for human rights abuses in Yemen and support for Islamic extremism. Russia has a corruption problem, gay problem and human rights problem.
Italy has a potential bankruptcy problem. The UK has a Brexit problem compounded by a leadership vacuum.
South Africa’s Jacob Zuma fears a prison cell when he leaves office. Ditto for Brazil’s Michael Temer and South Korea has just sent their president to jail.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is unsuccessfully fighting a war against the drug cartels with an approval rating that has plunged from 53 to 17 percent.
Turkey is politically schizoid. It can’t decide whether it wants to be in or out of the EU, secular or Islamic, pro or anti-NATO, a democracy or a dictatorship. Indonesia is also fighting to save its secular political institutions in the face of a resurgent Islam.
A ray of hope has emerged from recent elections in France in the form of Emmanuel Macron. But he is saddled with a legacy of economic mismanagement which has led to poor national productivity, unemployment levels at 10 percent-plus, a $2 trillion debt and a public sense of entitlement that will be difficult to overcome.
It is a big problem for Macron, and if he wants confirmation he should chat with Argentina’s Mauricio Macri who has spent the past 18 months trying to come to grips with the results of 12 years of economic mismanagement by successive Kirchener governments.
Then there is Donald Trump—the leader of the Free World. His base in rural America is built on granite. Everywhere else in the US it is sinking into the sand. The result is a hopelessly divided country which weakens his position on the international stage.
Not that he had much support from the other world leaders to start with. They don’t know whether to laugh at his tweets or panic at his attacks on the press and any critic anywhere; or his anti-free trade America First policy; his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement; travel bans; attacks on the rule of law; his dislike of the EU; his military posturing; and/or his ghetto vocabulary. Normally, the attendees of these summits look to the President of the United States for leadership. Not this time.
There are a few bright spots. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is the mortar that has held the European cornerstone in place through successive crises. But her room for manoeuvre is circumscribed by federal elections in September. And, after 12 years at the top, Ms Merkel would be the first to argue that it is time for fresh blood.
There are some willing and able to take on the role. Macron has already been mentioned. There is also Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau, although his taste in socks leaves something to be desired and, although Canada is an important country—as is Australia, its economy is not big enough to fill the current leadership vacuum.
While the leaders are locked in their debating chamber, the streets of Hamburg will be filled with 100,000-plus angry demonstrators. The city fathers have recruited an additional 14,000 police to deal with them. They are a rainbow coalition of dissent that will be shouting about trade, gay rights, Israel, Brexit, austerity, Yemen, Syria, press freedom, Trump, Putin, Erdogan…. But what they are really demanding is reassuring leadership so that they go back to being butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”
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15 Comments
“They” are few, and, as you say, we are “many”, billions. It seems to me utterly bonkers that those many billions accept this idea of a few national “strongmen/women” as a rational way of managing our social interactions.
Are we really such sheep? And do we really have nothing to lose but our chains by throwing them and their system off?
Dare we hope for the maturity to realise that there is nothing worth doing which, if it involves collective action, cannot be done cooperatively rather than by the coercion of sectional interests put in power every few years by people who don’t even read about what they are voting for?
If North Korea has boys toys and DJ Trump perceives a threat to his authority where does that take us? This morning the Hamburg police are using water cannon against otherwise peaceful protestors equipped with raincoats and umbrellas,
I am not sure you can really discribe an anti capitalist rally as just peaceful protesters. I’m very sure if anarcho-socialists ever got power they would not do worse to us than water cannon.
Tom that is a sadly true summing up of things as they stand. Very depressing.
Interesting that Macron is a “ray of hope” (probably because of his pro EU stance) but my own perception of his agenda is that he just a better looking George Osborne. Obama became President Disappointment and maybe Macron will too.
I agree with much of this op-ed. I have long thought that if a flying saucer landed in my garden and a little green man asked to be taken to the leader of the world I intend to reply “That would be Angela Merkel”.
I agree also with the tone of impending doom. The expectations of the west’s citizens far exceed their capacity to generate the wealth to fund it all and the scales of prosperity are tilting eastwards.
I understand Jock’s emotion but every attempt, by the many, to create a collective Utopia have foundered in disaster and repression.
I think you missed out the migratory flows of peoples out of Africa and the Middle East (although I think they are very different in nature). Other than that, everything’s great.
@ David Pocock,
….. a sadly true summing up of things as they stand. Very depressing.
Oh I don’t know. I’ve been on a bit of a high for the last month. Theresa May losing her majority was a much better outcome than I dared hope for!
June the 8th was my birthday Peter and may gave me a wonderful present. The gift that keeps giving.
What I Really want now an anti brexit national movement to form.
my view of Macron is that he’ll nothing very much and is basically the anyone but Le Pen president. Probably, he’ll be met with strikes and stuff. The French are not the British and won’t take a lot of small state “modernising” nonsense.
@ Richard Underhill
It is breathtaking that you should describe the thugs in Hamburg as peaceful demonstrators. They turned up wearing masks to avoid identification, blockaded roads, burned vehicles and threw bottles and other objects at police, causing dozens of injuries.
Is “peaceful” a liberal description for “anarchy”?
“I understand Jock’s emotion but every attempt, by the many, to create a collective Utopia have foundered in disaster and repression.”
Then you *misunderstand* me.
As I watch the latest news from Hamburg, Mr Underhill’s comments become even more disgraceful. Retraction would be in order.
Tom , writes sensibly , his concern understood’
It is indeed rather an odd international situation when Trudeau , looks good to me ,who was terrible on electoral reform , a betrayal of the sort of liberal politics , with no coalition excuses, those who decry centrists for a supposedly more left variation , see him in action in parliament, on this issue, he makes Clegg etc on tuition fees seem principled and brave !
Richard is wrong on the demonstrations, many peace loving , many far from it and far left extremists, anarchy , thugs, with no clue what a protest is.
The works of the late , so great , Dr. Martin Luther King jr should be compulsory reading and study in all schools in the whole of this world.
iThere might be crimes committed by somee demonstrators but those crimes are insignificant compared to the crimes committed by some of the world leaders inside. Those crimes include the murder of vast numbers of people. Why do the Hamburg police not take action about those crimes?
Obama became President Disappointment (though not enough to prevent his re-election) principally because of the increasingly dysfunctional US political system. I agree about not going overboard with Macron’s agenda, but he’s not Osborne because Osborne was at heart a secretive control freak and smoke-and-mirrors merchant. He’s not Obama because the political system is different and though he won’t find it easy, French politics is not so big-money-dominated or so loaded in favour of inaction as American, thanks to De Gaulle’s remarkably effective reforms two generations ago.
On Tom’s analysis of the world situation, I regret I agree, though at least note that Africa and Latin America have far fewer dictatorships, far fewer generals itching for power with soldiers who will follow them and more democracies (some quite effective, others as before less so) than ever before. Oh, and the British electorate has, rather to my surprise, sussed Theresa May.
Regarding the protesters I think in fairness some will be there to protest peacefully that which they find wrong with the system we live in. Unfortunately anti capitalists have a hard core they do not disassociate from who are violent and are likely OK with the idea of achieving change through violence. I can’t say I approve of that at all and we should as lib dems be condemning violence and we should not be sympathetic to anarchism.