Story:The massive billion dollars or so being spend on security for the G8/G20 summit this week, has many asking some hard questions.
My friend Ian, the political science guru from Calgary, writes, "I'd be fine with disbanding the G8 G20 entirely: a draft version of the final communiqué has already been leaked so what's the point of it all? If these leaders must meet in person, it should be televised. If their conversations cannot be publicized then they can just as easily use e-conference technology or meet in private at the United Nations HQ. It has the security capabilities and permanent facilities to support large gatherings of world leaders."
And he has a pretty good point. Most of the work is done before hand, making the big meetings themselves appear useless. But are they really?
So what if the communiqué is leaked. Communiqués be damned. How much has ever come out of them?
However, there is something intangibly important about meeting people face to face - about making those personal connections. It's more than trade irritants. You're less likely to order bombers to level his place of residence if you've had supper with the man, and his wife.
I remember a line from the movie Sum of All Fears. The new Russian president tells Bill Cabot, director of the CIA, (Morgan Freeman) that he wanted him to hear the message from him so he could read his body language and the inflection of his voice. That way, his full meaning would not be lost.
Indeed, since the advent of these G7, G8 and G20 meetings, has any nation that is a part of the exclusive club gone to war with another member? Has Germany marched on France? They had a habit of doing that for over 100 years before. Has England spent the better part of a millennium at war with France over something or other? Have the Russians bombed us into the stone age?
Is it worth a billion dollars? How much is peace worth? How much is diffusing tensions at this level worth compared to not getting together for regular confabs worth? What would another European full scale war be worth? Leaders bs'ing over Alberta beef is a lot cheaper than the alternative. Maybe the First World War could have been avoided if all the major powers (i.e. the current G8/G20) got together for some French wine once in a while in 1912.
National Post columnist Conrad Black pointed out on June 19 that these forums are a relatively new thing, writing, "Prior to the war-time Allied meetings at Tehran and Yalta, the only meetings of more than two leaders of major powers in modern times were the Congresses of Vienna (1814-1815), Berlin (1878) and Versailles (1919-1920), and the Munich Conference in 1938. There were none between Potsdam in 1945 and Geneva in 1955."
What did it take to get people to get together on those occasions? Hmmm. Let's see. The Napoleonic wars, the Russo-Turkish war, the Great War that did not end all wars, the second go around at a world war, and a hope of reducing tensions before a third world war, this one thermonuclear, took place.
Makes a security fence sound a little cheap, now, don't it?
Black also points out that Canada didn't even get invited to a wartime meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt, in Quebec, no less. Now, as host, we get to set the agenda.
And that's not a bad place to be.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net
