The meeting of leaders of the world's richest and most powerful nations next month in Kananaskis Country is a truly paradoxical affair.
The G-8 Summit is a grandiose annual gathering at which nothing is decided.
Its supposed agenda of "global governance" centres mainly on reducing the interference of governments in trade. And the supposed "anti-globalization" protesters outside the fences are far more committed to a substantial world government than the national leaders they oppose.
"As far as policy goes, the G-8 really accomplishes nothing," says Michael Walker, director of the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, echoing the opinion of commentators across the political spectrum.
"The real work is done on a continuing basis in forums like the World Trade Organization and NATO. And any agreements signed at the G-8 are settled long in advance, so I've always thought of these summits as just the circus of big government."
It is a "circus" predicted to cost Canadian taxpayers as much as $500 million and many commentators say the benefits of such summits could be achieved with far less cost and dramatics.
After the violent protests at the G-8 meeting last summer in Genoa, Italy, and then the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the cost of hosting even a smaller-than-usual summit has soared into the stratosphere.
The validity of the entire affair is being called into question by critics.
Supporters argue world leaders can't be kept from their agenda by terrorists or others who might oppose them. They also contend the discussions needed to forge the broadly based consensus required to address critical and costly issues G-8 presidents and prime ministers must deal with, cannot take place by e-mail or over the phone.
At Kananaskis, the G-8 agenda will focus on global economic growth, the fight against terrorism, and African development.
Yet the most important result of the summit will likely be the chance for world leaders to meet face-to-face at a time when personal relationships increasingly play a critical role in international diplomacy. Support among these countries is critical as the U.S. struggles to hold together a fragile coalition waging a dangerous and expensive war against terrorism.
After Sept. 11, the meeting will undoubtedly be used to showcase the G-8 leaders' "business-as-usual" attitude to a nervous world in the face of an uncertain economic climate.
The summit's unintended consequence, however, will be to give protesters a platform to advertise opposition to global capitalism and their commitment to a more actively regulatory world government.
"The more global the world becomes, the more important it is for its leaders to come together," says former United Church of Canada moderator Bill Phipps. "The issue isn't anti-globalization, but rather, what form of global government do we need?"
Policies of the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are determined by the industrialized countries and are hardly democratic, says Phipps.
"The term globalization, as it's used by leaders of the wealthy nations, is code for a certain set of international policies: free trade and more power and control to corporations," he says. "Real internationalism has to go hand-in-hand with the regulation of capital flow, global environmental standards and global labour standards."
Phipps is organizing an alternative summit in Calgary called Faith and the Common Good in advance of the Kananaskis meetings.
Walker -- who says the symbolic value of the G-8 summits as a forum for co-operation has diminished as they have become pulpits for the "paranoid" and left-wing NGOs (non-government organizations) -- says no one can administer global trade.
He cites disastrous results of the efforts by the Soviet Union and China to manage large portions of the world's economy.
In reality, countries that tried to expunge capitalism have produced the worst records for child labour, substandard health care and environmental degradation.
The best governments can do, Walker insists, is to establish the rule of law, eliminate corruption, enforce intellectual property rights and remove barriers to trade so free trade can bring truly global prosperity.
Trade analyst Aaron Schavey with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think-tank with close ties to the Bush administration, says that for the sake of the world's poor the central concern of the summit must be to reduce political barriers to trade.
He says eliminating trade barriers and adopting free-market policies creates a tide of prosperity that lifts all boats as it rises.
"All the studies show that poor countries that globalized enjoyed a five per cent per capita growth throughout the 1990s, and for every percentage point the GDP grows, the real wealth of the poorest people grows by one per cent," Schavey says.
He cites Chile, Taiwan and South Korea as examples of success stories.
Wealth cannot be simply transferred from richer to poorer nations because the money always gets siphoned off and never gets down to the poor, he says.
Schavey argues if wealthier nations really want to help the poor they would abolish the $1-billion US per day they dole out in domestic agricultural subsidies. They could then open their markets to world produce so poor countries could generate wealth at the grassroots, fund their own health-care systems, and protect the environment.
G-8 critics, like Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, don't see it that way.
Barlow argues that public health needs, environmental protection and development of poor nations can only be addressed in opposition to the corporate agenda.
She questions the democratic credentials of leaders of the developed nations and their ability to set an agenda equitable for everyone given the "enormous amounts of oil money and pharmaceutical money and corporate money" that fund the political process in those countries.
"It's really about one big agenda . . . unlimited growth and unregulated trade," Barlow says.
"What they're saying to the developing countries is, sign on to world trade, let our companies in, and become mini-Americas. And that's not really working. Japan is in trouble. China is in trouble. The latest World Bank report had to admit that all the globalization money that went into the Third World in the early 1990s has already left," she says.
"Even the emperor is looking down at himself and saying, my God, I'm naked."
The real issue for G-8 protesters, she says, isn't opposition to globalization -- "I eat bananas in the winter, and they weren't grown in my backyard" -- but rather who set the agenda.
She says major developed countries should be willing to give up some of their sovereignty to representative international institutions for the global common good.
University of Toronto political philosopher Clifford Orwin, a board member of Probe International's Pollution Probe, is sympathetic to some concerns of anti-globalization protesters. He points out the World Bank has a record of funding wasteful or destructive mega-projects such as China's Three Gorges Dam.
Yet, however undemocratic may be the economic organs of world trade, Orwin says, "I've been struck by the highly undemocratic character of these NGOs. They represent only themselves and their narrow constituency, yet they claim to be the voice of democracy, without having any mandate."
And since Sept. 11, the same anti-global trade protesters have become anti-war and anti-Zionist -- the common garb of the most malignant elements of the New Left, he says.
What the New Left wants in global governance is something all-pervasive but "extremely nebulous," Orwin says, since no international institutions wield the kind of global power the Left wants to see wielded.
What there are, in the end, are nations -- the G-8, the developing world and all the rest.
If international environmental, health-care and development policies need to have the force of law, they'll have to come in the form of treaties to which sovereign nations can freely subscribe.
"The lesson of the Kyoto agreement is that, in the end, countries won't bind themselves to treaties destructive to their interests," Orwin says. "The countries most adversely affected won't follow through. So if we have ecological problems that are regional or global, we can develop practical policies only in the form of treaties acceptable to everyone concerned" -- and especially to those who will be paying for them.
The United States has been vilified in many corners of the world -- including some European G-8 members -- for rejecting the Kyoto protocol on climate change, but Walker says that, post-Sept. 11, the world is fortunate to have the U.S. in the position of leadership among nations.
He contends American domestic politics and popular sentiment places far more restraint and demands far more compassion from U.S. foreign policy than could any international government.
"If the Americans themselves begin to see George W. Bush as a bully in the world, rather than a friendly cop, then they'll turn on him," Walker says. "But can you imagine what international relations would be like if Canada was running things, with our politics and our prime minister?"
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