UofT G8 Information Centre: Analytical Studies. Genoa 2001. United States

The United States successfully prevented the inclusion of criticisms of its position within the G8 communique. Neither the Foreign Minister's report or the G7 statement contained any comment on Kyoto. Only the final G8 communiqué addresed this topic stating that, "while there is currently disagreement on the Kyoto Protocol and its ratification, we are committed to working intensively together to meet our common objective." This phrase not only refrained from condemning the U.S. and its refusal to remain a part of Kyoto, but also implied that the U.S. remains a determined partner in the fight against greenhouse gas emmisions. For this reason, the U.S. earns full marks for successfully achieving its goal of not being critisized for renouncing Kyoto, and actually receiving praise for its "continued effort" to search for a solution to global climate change problems.

Improvements to International Financial Institutions were stressed in both the G7 statement and the G8 communique. The U.S.'s primary goal entering the summit was to improve the accountability of IFIs such as the IMF and the World Bank. The G7 statement and the G8 communique made several specific commitments to increase the transperency and accountability of all IFIs, especially the World Bank.

However, the U.S. did not achieve several of their specific objectives. There was no mention of performance based targets for IFIs, something the U.S. had stressed prior to the summit. With respect to America's proposal to increase the proportion of grants relative to loans, there was only an open-ended commitment in the G7 statement: "We support a meaningful replenishment of IDA and, in that context, we will explore the increased use of grants for priority social investments, such as education and health." Since the U.S. was able to achieve their objective in principal, but not specifically, we assign a grade of B for this topic.

There was no mention of National Missile Defense (NMD) in the G7 statement or G8 communique. On one hand this is positive since the U.S. prevented negative statements from Russia and Europe from being included in multilateral documents. On the other hand , the U.S. also failed in its goal to lobby support for the NMD and international approval. On the last day of the Summit President Bush convinced President Putin to accept the NMD under certain conditions, in return for entering into an aggressive offensive nuclear arms reduction agreement. For these reasons we award a grade of B.

The issue of terrorism was not mentioned in the G8 communique and thus it may be concluded that the United States failed to bring about discussion of this priority with other summit leaders. More specifically, it failed in its objective to garner further support among members and allies for signing and ratifying the Twelve Major Multilateral Conventions and Protocols for Combating Terrorism. It is important to note, however, that terrorism was mentioned in the Foreign Ministers communique. The Foreign Ministers condemned all forms of terrorism and stressed the need for international cooperation. Furthermore, the Ministers expressed their support for UN initiatives to combat terrorism including the UN sectoral counter-terrorism conventions and reaffirmed their political support for the negotiation of a comprehensive UN Convention against international terrorism. This signifies that while the US was not able to bring the issue of terrorism to the table in Genoa, it did introduce it into the summit process, albeit at a less influential level.

Prepared by: Michael Malleson and Jennifer Peer, G8 Research Group, University of Toronto

	This Information System is provided by the University of Toronto Library and the G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto.
	Please send comments to: g8@utoronto.ca This page was last updated August 15, 2024.

Country Performance Assessment United States

Country Performance Assessment
United States