Hot Air in Genoa

MEGO has not yet made it into vernacular speech, but it's an indispensable term of the journalistic trade. Columnist Michael Kinsley argued some years ago that the ultimate MEGO news story was the one headlined "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative" Today, it's a fair bet that most journalists would give top honors to "Leaders to Tackle Ambitious Agenda at G-8 Summit" You guessed it: MEGO means "My Eyes Glaze Over".

As a reporter, I shared that low regard for the "World Economic Summit" — an event apparently premised on the belief that as the heads of large countries gather, the candlepower grows exponentially, transforming all participants into grand statesmen. My first G-7 — Russia had not yet been invited to take part in the second, nonfinancial half of the summit — was Munich in 1992. Other than free-flowing beer and a brief, brutal confrontation between Munich police and a few ragged demonstrators, the event was excruciating: turgid briefings, tapioca communiqués, hordes of weary journalists desperate for a story — an orgy of gasbaggery. Since then, journalistic revulsion at the annual summit has only grown. This year's summit in Genoa will inevitably rekindle the loathing. Now that the candlepower axiom is dimming — the massing shock troops of antiglobalization have become the story — even officialdom may wish it could escape the ordeal.

The irony is that the G-8 is becoming the premier forum for addressing issues of globalization. In some respects, the group has eclipsed a United Nations that remains perpetually tied up in knots, and the leaders these days can claim real results. For example, work begun in the mid-1990s on reforming the international financial architecture helped keep the 1997 Asian financial meltdown from turning into a catastrophe. The group's efforts to combat money laundering led it to "name and shame" under-regulated tax havens — those best friends of organized crime, drug lords and corrupt politicians — and already seven countries have made serious reforms and another 32 have shown a willingness to clean up their acts. An initiative to reduce the debt burden of the world's poorest countries has led to 23 countries implementing measures to qualify for debt relief from international donors.

On noneconomic issues, the G-8 story has also been promising. It took too long, but Chernobyl's infamous reactor is being entombed in concrete because members raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the task. A 1997 push from the summiteers got the Kyoto climate-change talks back on track — that was, of course, before George W. Bush came along. This year, the creation of a fund to battle aids and other infectious diseases is on the agenda, and diplomats hope that the financial commitments will outstrip the contributions at last month's U.N. conference on AIDS.
The G-8 has managed these successes for several reasons. Collectively, it commands much of the world's financial resources, yet it's small enough to reach decisions. Moreover, the big industrial democracies have a similarity of outlook, so the attendees do not get wrapped up in clash-of-cultures debates — as the U.N. General Assembly did last month when its aids declaration was blocked by Islamic countries opposed to mention of homosexuality or prostitution. The G-8 enjoys a unique degree of democratic legitimacy, and it doesn't often suffer from the zero-sum competition of the U.N. Security Council, where a U.S. proposal is too often a ripe target for a Chinese veto.

Two problems stand between the G-8 and enduring success. The first is operational: the group needs to show that all its high-flown rhetoric has real-world consequences. That means regular briefings to show accountability — which would force the members to follow through and make those queasy reporters see genuine progress. The G-8 also needs to establish deeper ties with the developing world, working more closely with large, growing democracies such as Brazil, India and South Africa.

A more immediate problem is the role of the U.S. Bush has taken some blows for his unilateralist approach to world affairs. The G-8 could provide him with the perfect opportunity to show team spirit. The Bush Administration says it wants to accomplish real business in Genoa, pushing a new WTO round and boosting the group's efforts on infectious diseases. But questions about Washington's commitment to the G-8 persist as top policymakers telegraph their ambivalence about the group. Some, like Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, seem to disdain the G-8's tack on financial bailouts and tax havens. If the Bush team follows the same instincts it brought into office, the G-8 could too easily revert to being the world's most expensive photo op — and back to bloviating we will go.