G8 Sea Island 2004 Kirton

From June 8 to 10, 2004, President George W. Bush hosted the 30th annual summit of the Group of Eight (G8) major market democracies, at Sea Island, Georgia, in The Cloister hotel. As he prepared to do so, there were few outside observers who thought he was likely to produce a significant American foreign policy and global governance success. Most scholars of American foreign policy focused on the bitter two-year-long divisions between America and many of its G8 partners over the war in Iraq, the militarized unilateralism of a neo-hegemonic U.S., and the President’s dislike of multilateralism and international institutions as instruments to secure American goals in the world. Students of the G8, operating in the conventional "American leadership" tradition, wondered whether the forum could survive the absence of an America willing to lead and able to secure the support of a strong second in the summit club (Putnam and Bayne 1987). They also knew that among G8 leaders, U.S. presidents were historically the last to plan and prepare for the annual summit, and that only once before had a U.S. president hosted a summit in and amidst the preoccupations of a presidential election year. On that occasion, in 1976, the Republican president, hosting a G8 summit at an upscale resort hotel on America’s Atlantic seaboard five months before the November presidential election, produced a deeply disappointing D– summit, and five months later went down to electoral defeat.

Similarly sceptical were most scholars who had analyzed America’s G8 contribution to G8 summit’s past. The dominant school, of discretionary dominance, saw a G8 that needed an America capable of leading, but an America that never needed the G8 and that was finding it less useful in a post–Cold War, rapidly globalizing world (Putnam and Bayne 1987, Smeyser 1993). A second school saw the G8 as useful instrument of American influence with an expanding relevance, but still not an essential institution that a self-confident, unilateralist president, leading an America at war would need (Owen 1997, Putnam 1994, Antholis 2001). A third school argued that the G8 could and should become America’s central future institution in a post–Cold War, globalizing age, but only if it were reformed and ideally transformed into a full-fledged, highly legalized international organization such as the United Nations or the European Union (Ikenberry 1993, Bergsten and Henning 1996). Few felt that the America had come to need, and thus regularly adjust to, the members and the institutions of the G8 (Stephens 2002).

Amidst all the scepticism based on conventional wisdom, however, there were good grounds for believing that George Bush might well be able to make the Sea Island Summit an American, a G8, and a global success. These flowed from the logic of the concert equality model, developed during the post–Cold War years to explain G8 governance in an ever more complex, globalized world (Kirton 2003a, 2004). This model provides a portrait, not of "America the victorious" in the long Cold War, but of "America the vulnerable" to shocks from elusive enemies that are everywhere, that kill Americas at home and abroad, that the United Nations system or America alone cannot defend against, and that require the full co-operation of all of America’s G8 allies to defeat. Getting the collaboration of this highly capable, continuing "coalition of the willing," containing countries all committed to democratic principles, and leaders allowed by their citizens to act in their defence, required an America, at the Summit, willing not only to lead, but also to listen to, learn from, and adjust to what its necessary G8 allies want. Only then does effective G8-centred global governance flow, and America, its G8 partners, and the world as a whole emerge better off.

Pushing the Sea Island Summit toward success were the rising performance of the G8 and America in it over the past 30 years, the momentum from the Evian Summit the previous year, and the growing strength of the Sea Island preparatory process as America increasingly listened to, learned from, and adjusted to its G8 partners. Pulling it toward high performance were intensifying energy and terrorist shocks that reminded America and its allies of their common vulnerability, the failure of the UN or U.S. alone in response, the still predominant and equalizing capability of G8 countries, and the fidelity of Sea Island’s central agenda to the core G8 principles of globally promoting open democracy, individual liberty and social advance. Yet the poor domestic political capital of Bush and most of his potential strong summit supporters, and the large number of visitors and issues to be dealt with in a very short time severely tested the ability of these leaders to make the right deals in the little time they had alone.

On the whole, they met the challenge. America adjusted to its partners preferences and thus made the Sea Island Summit a substantial success for its achievements on poverty reduction in Africa, the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional security, and the world economy, if not also on trade, terrorism, sustainable development and international financial system management and reform. At the same time, America’s partners backed Bush’s bold vision and historic beginning to bring democracy, reform, prosperity, security, and sovereignty to Iraq and the broader Middle East and North Africa beyond. Yet whether Sea Island would become a summit of historic significance depended ultimately on the willingness of America's G8 partners to make Bush’s brave beginning toward a democratic Middle East a permanent, expanding, well-financed priority at G8 summits in future years. Only by acting through balanced mutual adjustment with its G8 allies, outside the mutual veto confines of the highly legalized UN, could a now deeply vulnerable America under any President and national policy secure the victories it desperately needed in the world as a whole (cf. Ikenberry 1998/9, 2001).

The G8 and America’s Growing Global Governance Effectiveness, 1975–2003

The first push toward success at Sea Island was the rising trend in performance of the G8 (formerly G7) summit over the past 30 years. As shown by Appendix A, since its 1975 start, the G8 became increasingly effective on most of its major functions (Kirton 2004). The duration of its deliberations, measured in days, jumped to three days in 1982, and leapt in 2003 to four days if the G8 leader’s back-to-back meetings in St. Petersburg and Evian are combined. Its "directional" function of setting new principles and norms, measured roughly by the number of words in the leaders’ concluding communiqués, jumped in 1996 to a generally sustained high level ever since. Its "decisional" functional of making collective commitments also did so, reaching a new peak of 206 commitments at Evian in 2003. Since 1992 the delivery of these commitments through compliance by G8 members with them also rose and always came in the positive range, even if their intended impact in the wider world has been less clear (Kokotsis 1999, Baliamoune 2000). The G8 has also been more active since 1995 in the development of global governance, most clearly by creating and directing G8 bodies of its own. This portrait of rising performance is confirmed by the higher scores awarded to most summits in recent years (Bayne 2000b).

To be sure, these grades suggest that the United States consistently put in a relatively poor performance as a summit host, and that America’s best effort came long ago when Ronald Reagan hosted at Williamsburg in 1983 (Nau 2004). But a broader look across all the individual summit functions shows that American-hosted summits had been on a rising trend, through George H.W. Bush’s Houston Summit in 1990 to Bill Clinton’s Denver Summit in 1997 (Fauver 2003, Brainard 2004).

This long-term rise in G8 summit performance has generally intensified since the French-hosted Evian Summit of June 1–3, 2004. Evian produced a record high of 206 commitments, across a wide array of issue areas, and mobilized modest amounts of new money to help put its commitments into effect. The priority commitments made at Evian proved to be complied with during the following year +51 percent of the time (on a scale from –100 percent to +100 percent), with both the major Iraq disputants and the outgoing and incoming G8 hosts, France and the United States respectively, complying at an above average rate. Evian’s longer-term legacy came in its creation of three new G8 bodies, for fighting terrorism, for the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and for science and technology for sustainable development. The Evian leaders also issued several instructions to other international institutions, particularly to the multilateral bodies of the UN system. Above all, they recorded their common determination to respond together through the G8 to the external shocks they collectively recognized – the proliferation of WMD, terrorist attacks and sinking oil tankers polluting ecologically fragile shores. Evian also looked ahead to define the Sea Island agenda, by requesting reports at the 2004 Summit on terrorism and transport security, while, unusually, leaving a report on Africa to the British Summit in 2005.

During the year after Evian, the G8 countries continued to co-operate, in ways that cumulatively dampened the political divide among them over the 2003 American-led war against Iraq. To be sure, by late spring of 2004, the old divisions reappeared over the premature leak of America’s Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI), Bush’s pledges to Israeli president Ariel Sharon about the latter’s Middle East Peace Process (MEPP), revelations of the American abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and ongoing demands for the U.S. to hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government and the UN. But now those divisions were overwhelmed by several stronger processes of G8 co-operation, through several coalitions of the willing containing G8 partners in their core. These included the progress made by U.S. emissary James Baker on Iraqi debt relief, commitments of new money from G8 partners outside the coalition (led by Canada) to reconstruct Iraq, co-operation among several G8 partners in the STAR program of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and the admission of all G8 countries to America’s Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), after Russia became the final member to join (on May 31 just before the Sea Island Summit’s start).

Also important was the cadence of co-operative, institutionalized plurilateral summitry orchestrated by the Americans when they chose in the summer of 2003 to hold their G8 summit on June 8–10, 2004. June 2004 started with Bush’s June 4 visit with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and the Pope in Rome, a June 5 visit with French president Jacques Chirac in Paris, and a June 6 encounter in Normandy among all G8 leaders except Japan’s Junichiro Koizumi to celebrate the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Soon after the Sea Island Summit, Bush was scheduled to attend the U.S.-EU Summit in Dublin, and then the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Istanbul on June 28–29. This month of four major summits was designed to show the world that George Bush was indeed an effective allied and global leader. It would start by featuring Chirac thanking Bush for sending American troops to fight and die for freedom in his country, before there even existed a UN to issue permission slips. It would end with Turkey – the great democratic, secular Muslim country and NATO ally – helping America get NATO to take responsibility for securing the liberation of Iraq after the June 30 transition of authority, in the same spirit that NATO was doing in Afghanistan and had done in liberating Kosovo from genocide in 1999. With these well-choreographed reminders of the United States, France, and most G8 partners fighting together for freedom on so many different global fronts (including the ongoing stabilization effort in Haiti), memories of the UN-magnified divisions of early 2003 would erode, and the common fight for freedom in the greater Middle East be put at the fore.

Accompanying this strategic architecture was a major adjustment on the part of America to accommodate the priorities of its G8 partners as the Sea Island preparatory process advanced. Bush, disappointed with his first encounter at Genoa in 2001, had begun the Sea Island preparatory process with great scepticism about the value of the G8 summit, and even the need to hold it every year, including 2004. During the summer of 2003, the Americans confirmed they would host a summit, but it would be a very short one, in an informal setting at Sea Island on Georgia’s coast. At the last French-hosted sherpa meeting in November 2003, the Americans made it clear that they wanted no lead-up G8 ministerial meetings (apart from those for Finance and Home Affairs), no new money pledged, and, probably, no invited outsiders – or, if any, very few and no one who had been there before. As themes for their summit, the Americans offered their overall American foreign policy trilogy of "Security, Prosperity, and Freedom." When asked what a freedom deliverable might look like, the Americans handed their sherpa colleagues a copy of Bush’s speech to the National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, 2003, which clearly laid out the Americans’ vision of democratizing the Middle East. The central agenda items that had fuelled the success of the last three summits – Africa and ecologically sustainable development – were virtually absent from the American game plan.

Once it assumed the G8 chair on January 1, 2004, the U.S. began to move away from this stark vision. The Americans mounted a very dense set of preparatory meetings, through overlapping meetings of sherpas and foreign affairs sous-sherpas (FASS), political directors, finance deputies, and African personal representatives (APRs), suggesting that Bush sought a singularly presidentially directed and delivered summit, rather than a diffuse ministerially produced one. Yet he employed his ministers in G8 forums on his priorities of terrorism (Home Affairs/Justice), finance (including terrorist finance), and GMEI, the latter by reinstating the lead-up G8 foreign ministers meeting, held on May 14 in Washington and featuring a presidential visit to the G8 foreign ministers assembled there.

At their first sherpa meeting, the Americans presented a summit agenda composed of four major deliverables: GMEI and its integrally linked issues of the MEPP and Iraq; transport security and terrorism, featuring the Secure and Facilitated International Travel Initiative (SAFTI); further action on the nonproliferation of WMD; and action on private sector–led development.

The centrepiece of this quartet, and the Sea Island Summit as a whole, was GMEI, later renamed the Broader Middle East Initiative on the Summit’s eve. As the second and third sherpa meetings unfolded, GMEI took the shape of a general G8 political statement of principles, a list of existing G8 members’ programs in this area and a list of new G8 initiatives, by members collectively or jointly, on issues such as literacy, women’s education, freedom of the press, and finance. G8 members moved closer to consensus that GMEI must be accompanied by progress on MEPP, as America’s G8 and Middle East partners demanded, but that the two would be done simultaneously, as America insisted, rather than holding GMEI hostage to the prior outbreak of peace between Israel and Arabs in the Middle East. A similar spirit of convergence pervaded the equally delicate and integrally linked issue of the political transition to sovereignty, security, development, and democracy in Iraq.

The second major deliverable, on transport security and terrorism, included initially divisive issues such as the forward deployment of immigration and customs personnel, and full airside screening to ensure that those who worked in the airline industry faced the same thorough screening as their passengers every time they boarded or serviced a plane. Also included were the Evian remit mandates on counter-terrorism capacity building assistance, a progress report on MANPADs (portable shoulder-launched missiles used against aircraft), and an overall terrorism review.

The third major deliverable – keeping WMD from falling into the hands of terrorists and other enemies – included an American proposal to deny potential enemies access to the specific components they needed for a full nuclear-fuel cycle and thus the ability to develop nuclear weapons of their own. Other American-driven proposals were expanding PSI, controlling chemical, biological and radiological weapons, and expanding the Kananaskis Global Partnership on Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction to include new money for the dismantlement of WMD in Libya, which had now suddenly joined the camp of co-operating states. Progress here would depend on Germany, which insisted it would make no new serious spending commitments at Sea Island at all.

The fourth deliverable, private sector-led development, was inspired by the recently released report, Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making Business Work for the Poor, co-chaired by Canadian prime minister Paul Martin and Mexican ex-president Ernesto Zedillo (Commission on Private Sector Development 2003). To flesh it out, the Americans sought to foster the flow of remittances from those in the rich north to their families in the poor south. They also considered creating growth index bonds, which would reward rich investors placing money in poor countries according to how much the recipient country grew each year. All G8 members endorsed the first initiative, while only Germany, very grudgingly gave the second any support.

As the spring unfolded, the enthusiasm of America’s partners and parts of the American administration and society, saw ever more items added to the list. The first addition, peace support, primarily in Africa, had been signalled by the Americans in November 2003 and later outlined in a paper co-authored by Italy and the United States. Here the now free-spending United States was prepared to put US$660 million of its own money for programs in Africa and another US$200 million elsewhere. America invited its G8 partners to contribute as well. The G8 members, many with programs of their own for training heavy police and experience in the civilian policy component of the G8’s conflict prevention programs, urged the U.S. to reinforce existing mechanisms, rather than reinvent the wheel (Kirton and Stefanova 2004). The U.S. seemed willing to do so, although Germany’s reluctance to spend arose here again.

A sixth item, famine and food security, was first floated in a fragile form by the Americans in the early spring, and received an enthusiastic push by the partners. It aroused the familiar intra-G8 debate about how the issue would be framed, what it would include and what geographic areas it would focus upon. The G8 partners now found an expansive solution, and the combined category of "Famine/Food Security" jumped onto the Sea Island agenda for discussion with the African leaders that were later invited for a session on the Summit’s last day.

A seventh item, receiving similarly expansive accommodation and synthesis, was global health. From the very beginning, all G8 members, including the frugal Germans, agreed that they would act to eliminate polio by providing the funds necessary to ensure its eradication and intervening with those countries, such as Nigeria, where the disease was breaking out again. Action against HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, and the future of the Genoa Summit–financed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis subsequently joined the list.

The issue of global economic growth saw a major shift in emphasis as the preparations progressed. An initial American desire to focus strongly on delivering the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Agenda by its intended completion date of 2005 shrank as the months went on. Rising rapidly were volatile and soaring oil prices – an issue of particular of concern to voters in North America, where elections loomed.

The political security agenda centred on the regional security priorities of Iran and North Korea. The Sea Island Summit was also positioned to deal with any late-breaking political-security crises, especially as the Japanese asked that one session be kept free for the leaders to discuss any issues they might want to raise.

American accommodation and agenda expansion had their limits. There were pressures from France to return to Evian’s issue of science and technology for sustainable development, to upgrade the Global Environment Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) that a G8-centred group was advancing at lower levels, to accept Japan’s desire for an initiative of "reduce, reuse, and recycle," and to respond to British prime minister Tony Blair’s desire to address climate change directly. But the inter-temporal division of labour, initially established in the autumn of 2003 to leave sustainable development and Africa almost entirely to Britain’s 2005 G8 Summit, seemed to endure as far as the environment was concerned.

Taken together, by the end of May 2004, with all the ministerials and all but the final sherpa meetings concluded, American accommodation had produced a wide-ranging agenda in which the priorities of America’s partners – led by their African agenda – featured as strongly as those of America alone. This result reflected both an America desire to have fallback successes should its GMEI centrepiece not survive in the initially envisaged full-blown form and to adopt its partners’ priorities in return for their support for GMEI itself.

This drive toward the expansive, big-package, synergistic solution – rather than a restrictive, mutual-veto one – was reinforced by the particular priorities America’s partners brought. Few had strongly entrenched demands that were anathema to the others. Most made modest efforts within the bounds of the possible or, in the case of GMEI, a serious shared attempt to find a solution to the big divisions among G8 partners that flourished outside the G8 club.

Second-ranked Japan, an American ally with its armed forces in Iraq, was highly supportive of the U.S. At an early stage, Koizumi by publicly stated that Sea Island would allow all G8 partners to express their commitment to the democratic reconstruction of Iraq. He also showed Japan’s continuing concern with the return of Japan’s abductees and their children still in North Korea, and with North Korean nuclear proliferation, including the Korean sale of enriched uranium to Libya. Within the preparatory process, Japan was happy to let the U.S. set the agenda, offering, as its only real initiative, one on the environmental three R’s of recycle, reduce, and reuse.

Third-ranked Germany joined France in showing the greatest interest in shaping GMEI into something that all could accept and that might work. The Germans were very active devising drafts to this end. They continued to insist on no new spending, but were prepared to go forward on the low-cost polio front. They also stood alone in supporting American ideas on growth index bonds.

France approached Sea Island as the guardian of the 2003 Evian legacy, with a desire to continue Evian’s great success in ending the transatlantic divide over Iraq. This led France to join Germany in the quest to make GMEI work, especially on the immediate imperative of securing the UN resolution required to hand over authority to a new, genuinely sovereign Iraqi government on June 30. France was also at the forefront of those seeking to expand the agenda to give some of the Evian priorities greater life, notably on Africa and its famine and food security, peace support, private sector development, and HIV/AIDS. The French were further tempted to bring to the summit table the issues of financing for development, since Chirac had become attached to the idea of a tax on international transactions such as oil to raise the necessary funds, and sustainable development, an Evian highlight that Sea Island still threatened to completely erase.

Britain, the ranking American ally in Iraq, focused on preparing for its presidency next year, and thus laying a strong Sea Island foundation for the Africa and sustainable development centrepiece themes that they had signalled in 2003 would feature in 2005. Thus the British were interested in famine, development finance, and sustainable development, including climate change and water. They tried to keep environmental issues alive at the working level and thus available for an upgrade to the leaders level should the occasion arise.

Italy, another American ally in Iraq, had less well-defined priorities, but was highly active at the working level, weighing in across the board on technical concerns. Their one big initiative was peace support for Africa, on which they co-authored the paper with the U.S.

Canada continued to emphasize its 2002 Kananaskis legacy (Fowler 2003). Its new prime minister, Paul Martin, with a looming election on June 28, burning domestic political issues, and an established international and G8 reputation, largely left the Americans alone to add Canada’s core concerns. Martin was a pioneer on the polio issue, where early victory came, and more generally on global health and private sector-led development, where the Martin-Zedillo report served as the lens through which the issue of private sector-led development would be addressed. On the campaign trail at home, Martin promised to raise the issue of world oil prices at Sea Island, in search of some relief. There remained the possibility that he would also try to advance his pet project of creating a leaders-level G20 to reinforce the work of the G8, even knowing that the other G8 leaders, gathering together since 2001, quite liked the G8 membership the way it was.

For Russia, the big issues were terrorism and, defensively, how to accommodate its G8 partners’ desires for reduced oil prices and for nuclear nonproliferation in North Korea and Iran. Russia, with one eye to its hosting of the G8 in 2006, was also anxious to secure G8 support for its membership in the WTO and fully at the G7 finance ministers forum.

As the Summit approached, several powerful pressures outside pulled the G8 Leaders toward making their summit a substantial success. The first force was the recent shocks that reminded all G8 leaders of their individual vulnerabilities and thus common aversion to severe threats to basic national needs.

Rearing its well-recognized worrisome head was the major vulnerability that had always reliably induced a strongly, sequentially shocked, and now hyper-sensitive G8 to co-operate in the past (Kirton 2004, Keohane and Nye 1989). World oil prices rose to new and potentially sustained new highs in nominal dollars, just as American and Canadian voters began their big summer driving seasons and as the sustained economic expansion of the U.S. and Japan – as well as China – promised to keep demand and oil prices soaring as well. Even with most Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) co-operating with the G8, an unprecedented and ominous threat came from angry non-state actors in a politically troubled, troubled, terrorist-ridden Middle East.

A second, increasingly closely connected, shock-driven vulnerability came from an upsurge in terrorist attacks against G8 nationals and targets. The first five months of 2005 brought an unusually steady and deadly succession of terrorist attacks against G8 countries. While Russia bore the biggest burden, the March bombing of the Madrid train system brought terrorist mass murder to continental Europe and to a member of the EU. Even though that event led middlepower Spain to pull its troops out of Iraq, all G8 members with troops already in Iraq – in accordance with their sense of responsibility as great powers – kept theirs in. Nonetheless, America, Britain, and Italy continued to take casualties, as terrorists increasingly targeted foreign nationals working for the oil industry in Saudi Arabia as well as in Iraq.

A second pull from the outside came from the poor performance of the United Nations system, or of America acting alone. In the shock-scarred field of energy, neither the UN not the U.S. on its own (even with its Strategic Petroleum Reserve) was particularly relevant in mounting an effective response. In sharp contrast stood oil-exporting Russia and Canada, which did promise some relief. In response to the shocks of terrorism and threats to transport security, neither the multilateral International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Interpol, nor America alone could offer the effective response that came from the G8-centred Container Security Initiative (CSI), PSI, or the program against MANPADs (Flynn 2004). In regard to the nonproliferation of WMD, on the eve of the Sea Island Summit the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spoke eloquently of the failures and weakness of his organization in Iran, North Korea, and beyond. America alone did finally find physical some proof that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had indeed illegally possessed WMD (in the form of the chemical weapons of sarin and mustard gas) and had indeed harboured Al Qaeda–affiliated terrorists (in the former of the probable beheader of American Nicholas Berg). But the discovery of extensive caches in a finally co-operative Libya showed that, short of a major military invasion, America acting alone could not do the job any better than the IAEA.

On the immediate issue of Iraq, America also realized it could no longer go it largely alone. As casualties and costs mounted, the United States became eager to hand over responsibility to a UN-approved sovereign Iraqi government on June 30. But neither America nor its G8 partners were under any illusions, after the past 12 years, that the UN could cope without major support in many forms from the G8 great powers themselves. Only on the issue of development could the UN claim a level of normative and epistemic effectiveness that the G8 could use as a foundation for action to move ahead.

A third pull came from changes in G8 capabilities. When outside vulnerabilities flow through the inadequate defences of the UN multilateral system or of a hegemonic, unilateralist America, to seriously threaten G8 members, they often encounter a G8 club with the collective capabilities in the world, and the equal capabilities among members, to inspire G8 co-operation that proves effective in the globe as a whole. In 2004 the G8, even without the full and now enlarged European Union, still collectively dominated the global economy, despite the recent rise of communist China and democratic India.

Within the G8, while America was the G7’s projected leader in gross domestic product (GDP) for 2003–04, the actual figures for GDP growth in the first quarter of 2004 suggested that an oil-rich Russia and a now strongly recovering Japan had claimed first and second place (Morse and Richard 2002). Similarly, the even strong decline in the value of the U.S. dollar against other G8 currencies since Evian made America sufficiently aware of its vulnerabilities, and modest about its capabilities and performance, to search for co-ordinated solutions with its G8 friends.

A fourth pull came from the fidelity of Sea Island’s GMEI centrepiece to the G8’s core principles of "open democracy, individual liberty and social advancement" (Kirton 2003a). Summits succeed when they focus on issues that directly invoke these core principles, and when all G8 members have internalized them as part of their political practice and identity at home. Here one impediment arose from worries that Vladimir Putin’s Russia was backsliding from the G7 standards of practice in respecting freedom of the press and renouncing arbitrary arrest. However, the larger force was the way all G8 members were aware of the need to defend open democracies against Islamist-linked terrorism and to build democratic societies on the front lines of Afghanistan and even post-Saddam Iraq. The remaining challenge was whether the G8 could get leaders from the greater Middle East embrace the democratic path, for in their current practice, many were very embryonic or partial democracies indeed.

Compounding the challenge of democratic dilution was the G8 leaders’ limited freedom at home to adjust to the demands of their partners abroad. For the G8 leaders’ political capital and control were collectively weak, and featured exceptional American weakness juxtaposed against Russian strength.

Host George Bush had a very old and razor-thin electoral mandate, a looming election five months after the Summit and a plummeting, minority, personal and party approval rating in the polls. A CBS News poll dated May 20–23, 2004, showed his approval rating dropping to a record low of 41 percent. A May 10–13 poll of likely voters by Zogby International showed rival John Kerry beating him by a margin of between 47 percent and 42 percent were the election held at that time.

Outside the United States, Canada’s Paul Martin was even more electorally preoccupied and constrained, as he faced a general election on June 28 and would return with only a minority government if his latest party voter intention rating of 38 percent persisted. Britain’s Tony Blair, like Bush, had a party behind in the polls (at 32 percent to the opposition’s Conservatives’ 36 percent and the Liberal Democrats’ 22 percent), even if his next election was at least a year off. Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder was also domestically unpopular, as was France’s Jacques Chirac, whose party was routed by the Socialist opposition and its allies in regional elections in March.

Japan’s Junichiro Koizumi was in better shape in the polls, but faced upper house elections in July 2004. The only experienced, legislatively confident, electorally secure leader with political capital in domestic public opinion was Russia’s Vladimir Putin. His recent re-election by a 71 percent majority, a massive majority in his legislature, and very high approval ratings were the inverse of the ones held by his American counterpart. The Sea Island Summit thus promised to do well in areas where Russia was a major player – such as terrorism, transport security, weapons of mass destruction, and energy if Putin proved able and willing to act as a full member of the G8 club.

A final impediment to success at Sea Island was the absence of the constricted participation and the considerable time that allowed G8 leaders to be alone and bond as leaders, and thus lead the world to great achievements and historic change. The Americans’ chosen setting at informal, isolated Sea Island was well suited to bring out G8 leaders’ leadership at its best. But the Americans had designed one of the shortest summits in G8 history, and had further compromised it with extensive ceremonial, bilateral and social components. Furthermore, on their first full day of summitry they would meet at noon with several invited leaders from the greater Middle East, and would have a similar meeting again with six invited African leaders on the Summit’s final day.

These outreach sessions and guest lists did, however, display America’s skill in adjusting to add Africa with equal emphasis, and in attracting the leaders of several consequential Middle East countries to come to Sea Island and give Bush’s America and G8 Summit a chance. Yet they left very little time for the G8 leaders to go beyond what their sherpas and ministers had already decided on their behalf. Moreover, on the critical issues of democratic development in the Middle East and in Africa, these sessions required G8 leaders to come together and their outside partners to come together, and the two groups to come together as well, in the same way, at the same time, first on June 9 and then, starting somewhat from scratch, again on June 10. On the basis of probabilities alone, the Sea Island Summit format, let alone the difficulties outside in the Middle East and Africa, made it extraordinarily challenging for the Sea Island Summit to be the success in spreading freedom so much desired by Bush. As the Sea Island Summit started, it was very much up to him, as a statesman, as a political leader, and as a person, to make it all work.

This he largely did. As it unfolded from June 8 to 10, Sea Island proved to be a summit of substantial achievement for its many accomplishments across the broad array of issues it came to include. It also had the potential to be a summit of historic significance if its bold beginning to democratically reform the Middle East would be kept alive by the G8 at subsequent summits, starting in Britain in 2005.

On many of the standard dimensions of summit performance, Sea Island set new highs, as Appendix B shows. As a deliberative institution, the G8 at Sea Island issued a record 16 documents, often very lengthy and detailed and covering 10 separate issue areas. In setting normative directions and principles, it highlighted the theme of freedom and democracy, both in the opening passage of its Chair’s Summary and throughout the other 15 documents. As a decisional institution, it generated a record high of 253 concrete future-oriented collective commitments.

To help ensure the delivery of these commitments, the G8 Summit specified 12 remit mandates for reports to be given to, or work done by, next year’s summit. It also mobilized an estimated US$2.77 billion in new money, a sum more than four times as much as Evian in 2003, if much lower than the US$50 billion of Kananaskis in 2002. It created or directed 19 G8 or G8-centred institutions, at the ministerial and official levels as well as civil society level. And it issued more than 500 instructions, of both guidance and support, to a vast array of other international institutions. On all dimensions, save money mobilized, Sea Island saw a major advance from the performance of virtually all summits past.

The centrepiece for the Sea Island Summit, and for George Bush as its host, was the Broader Middle East and North Africa, its integrally linked component of the MEPP, and the immediate imperative of the sovereignty, security, development, and democratization of Iraq. Here history was made. One hour before the Summit opened, and thanks significantly to its strong pull effect, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution transferring sovereignty to a new Iraqi government on June 30. In doing so, it reunited G8 members after their often bitter divisions over Iraq during the past year and a half. During, and due to, the eight months’ preparatory process for the Sea Island Summit, the issue of democratic development in the Middle East was put on the international agenda, adopted as a goal by the Arab League Summit and affirmed by the seven invited leaders from the region at a lunchtime dialogue with the Sea Island G8 on the Summit’s second day. The Summit’s signature moment came when Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, the newly installed president of a soon-to-be sovereign Iraq, sat beside George Bush in a bilateral encounter and thanked him and the American people for the sacrifices they had made in freeing Iraq from Saddam Hussein. The G8 followed with a bold political declaration promising support for the principles of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights in the Middle East. It backed these words with the G8 Plan of Support for Reform, containing specific projects embracing political, economic, and social reform, well targeted to the priorities of the region and financed by US$100 million in new funds. To make this down payment permanent and expansive, G8 leaders created the Forum for the Future for G8 and Middle East ministers of foreign, economic, and other affairs. It also established several similarly inclusive bodies for civil society stakeholders in strategic sectors.

The second big winner at Sea Island was Africa. It secured a new program to build capacity for peacekeeping and peace support, backed by almost US$1 billion from the U.S. and the EU. It obtained another new program, containing 49 specific commitments, to end the cycle of famine in the Horn of Africa and to provide food security beyond. Poor countries in Africa and elsewhere also received a promise, potentially worth another US$1 billion, that G8 leaders were prepared to extend to heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) for the HIPC Initiative, due to expire by the end of 2004, for another two years, and to top up the HIPC trust fund to write off bilateral debt. They also obtained a commitment, worth up to US$200 million to eradicate polio by 2005, and a program, backed by about US$375 million, to develop vaccines and otherwise act against HIV/AIDS. More broadly, Africans benefited from a G8 action plan to apply entrepreneurship to poverty eradication, featuring an initiative to lower the cost of the remittances sent by those in the rich north to family members and friends in the poor south. To receive these promises and discuss their future, African leaders attended the G8 for the fourth year in a row, with the veterans from South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, and Algeria joined by newcomers from Uganda and Ghana for a lunchtime session with G8 leaders on the Summit’s third day. Africa’s prominence on the Sea Island agenda, above or equal that of the Middle East in many respects, was due to the strong, skilful pressure from many sources, notably an American-supportive Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi, and Junichiro Koizumi, to Canada and France as past summit hosts, to the institutional nest of the G8’s APR process, to pressures from African advocates within the U.S. administration, and to a transnational coalition inspired by South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, supported by Blair and delivered by the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States (Atwood, Browne, and Lyman 2004).

A third area of accomplishment was nonproliferation of WMD. Here the G8 imposed a one-year moratorium on the export of materials that recipient states could use to acquire nuclear weapons, and a promise to modernize the leaky nonproliferation regime to close such loopholes for good. The G8 also expanded their 2002 Global Partnership for safely dismantling weapons of mass destruction to several countries beyond Russia, most notably Iraq and Libya.

A fourth area of major movement was regional security issues. The second-day dinner discussion focused on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea. It produced a G8 statement, much sought by America’s G8 partners and those in the region, on "Gaza Withdrawal and the Road Ahead to Middle East Peace." Showing the Summit’s flexibility and political responsiveness, the leaders also discussed Haiti, where U.S., French, and Canadian troops were involved in democratic nation-building, and issued a strong statement to ward off a potential outbreak of major ethnic cleansing in Sudan.

In other areas of traditional G8 summit action, however, the results were more modest. The discussion of the world economy witnessed the usual trans-Atlantic finger pointing. But its discussion of energy saw the G8 turn from admonishing Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to explore solutions within the G8, including energy efficiency, conservation, and alternatives to oil. Moreover, in the one clear outburst of spontaneous combustion at Sea Island, the leaders expressed their concern with how the threat of terrorism could hurt or end the strong economic recovery now underway, not just through its impact on energy prices, but in adding uncertainty and transactions costs across the G8 and the global economy as a whole. In doing so these leaders activated their memory of past energy vulnerabilities, melded them to terrorism, and came together to confront the much broader threat posed by this deadly combination in the post–September 11 world (Ikenberry 1988).

On trade, the leaders’ statement invited G8 ministers establish a framework by the end of July for the deadlocked negotiations in the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda. But it refused to acknowledge the outstanding commitment to complete the Doha negotiations by 2005. On terrorism, the G8 produced a Secure and Facilitated International Travel Initiative (SAFTI) containing 28 action items. But it omitted a contentious proposal for full airside screening or measures to deal with small airports and aircraft or ground transportation on subways and trains. The action plan on science and technology, the mere existence of which was a real accomplishment, largely approved existing work, but set no new directions, apart from endorsing Japan’s initiative on the three "R’s."

Most strikingly, the Sea Island summiteers, meeting on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Bretton Woods institutions, devoted no attention to modernizing the international financial system to meet the needs of the twenty-first century world. Nor did they address any current international financial crises, such as that in Argentina, or those that might arise if U.S. and G8 interest rates were to rise too far too fast.

If the political summit had some disappointments, the physical summit had very few, at least for those seeking a flawlessly executed, completely safe experience, well designed to let the G8 and above all George Bush get their preferred message out. The many bilaterals, the opening dinner with the spouses, the four sessions among the G8 leaders, and the three outreach sessions (with the leaders of the Middle East, Iraq and Africa) all flowed smoothly and won public approval and praise from both the G8 leaders and their guests. As Appendix C shows, no more than 500 civil society activists arrived, for activities that produced only 15 arrests on minor charges no bodily injury or physical damage at all. The 20,000 security personnel kept any potential terrorist threats at bay. And a cost-conscious U.S. government, which spent only one third as much to mount the Sea Island Summit as had the French spent at Evian the previous year, reaped its desired reward of having only 1,492 media members arriving to scrutinize the G8 leaders and having them report the event largely from the information constantly dispensed by the U.S. administration. The only obvious losers were the locals, who, with much of the media missing, lost much of their one chance in a lifetime to showcase their city and state to the world.

As a domestic political event, Sea Island also proved its value for its electorally engaged host. Bush’s popularity had been plummeting in the polls for the previous two months, to the point where his presumptive Democratic presidential rival, John Kerry, had a six- to seven-point lead on the Summit’s eve. Sea Island allowed Bush to show that he could work with the allies, solve the Iraq problem before it became a Vietnam-like nightmare, and forward the value of freedom that most Americans recalled they so cherished as they honoured the memory of the recently deceased Ronald Regan during the week of the Summit. A Fox News poll released on June 13, three days after the Sea Island Summit had ended, showed that Bush had cut Kerry’s lead to a statistically insignificant 2 percent from a 6 to 7 percent margin just before the start of the Summit.

None of Bush’s G8 partners secured similar domestic political benefits from spending time with George Bush in the United States. Canada’s Paul Martin, facing a general election before the end of the month, regularly invoked his G8 performance during the televised debates among party leaders the following week, but his personal and party’s slide in the polls continued much as before. Japan’s Junichiro Koizumi saw his and his party’s approval plummet back where it had been before the strong surge brought by his pre-Summit trip to North Korea. In Britain, Tony Blair returned home to a devastating defeat in local and European elections, as his Labour Party’s 22.3 percent of the vote in the latter was the lowest since before World War One. Elsewhere in the European parliament elections, France’s ruling UMP received only 16 percent (compared to 30 percent for the opposition Socialists), Germany’s ruling Social Democrats 21 percent, and Italy’s ruling Forza Italia 20–23 percent.

Despite their poor standings back home, the leaders at Sea Island largely resisted the temptation to play to their domestic audiences by garnering quick popularity at the expense of their G8 colleagues abroad. The mood of unanimity shown in the Security Council vote just before the Summit opened, and reinforced by the leaders’ togetherness at Normandy just before and the Reagan funeral just after, prevailed throughout the Summit itself. While divisions did emerge over how much a soon-to-be sovereign Iraq would receive in debt relief from the Paris Club and security support from NATO, these questions could easily be left for different forums to deal with at a later time. The most discordant note came, safely, from Chirac, who emphasized at the end that the concluding Chair’s Summary did not reflect his views, without specifying where and how.

As the leaders left Sea Island, it remained unclear how large the legacy of the Sea Island Summit’s centrepiece – George Bush’s bold beginning on Middle East democratization – would be. Blair reiterated that he would focus his 2005 G8 Summit on Africa and climate change, without adding the Middle East to the list. He implied that he would again invite outsiders, without suggesting that Middle East leaders would return as part of this outreach. The onus thus shifted to a determined American effort to use the second, post-Summit half of their year vigorously as host to get as much as possible done. Beyond that, a strong surge forward would wait until it was clear who would be the U.S. president in 2005, and how those in the Middle East would decide to proceed.

*Note: This is a revised and expanded version of a paper prepared for a conference on "Security, Prosperity and Freedom: Why America Needs the G8," Kelly School of Business, University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana, June 3–4, 2004. The author gratefully acknowledges the research contribution of Nikolai Roudev, Abby Slinger, and the G8 Research Group, and the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, through the "After Anarchy" project, for the research on which this chapter is in part based. Draft of June 18, 2004.

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Year	Site	Bayne Grade	# of Days	# of Statements	# of Words	# of Commitments	Compliance Score	# of Ministerials Created	# of Remit Mandates	# of Leaders Bodies Cr Ttl
1975	Ldg	A–	3	1	1,129	14	57.1	0	1	1	1
1976	Res	D	2	1	1,624	7	8.9	0	1	0	1
1977	Cap	B–	2	6	2,669	29	8.4	0	1	0	1
1978	Cap	A	2	2	2,999	35	36.3	0	0	2	3
1979	Cap	B+	2	2	2,102	34	82.3	0	1	3	5
1980	Prv	C+	2	5	3,996	55	7.6	0	1	0	3
1981	Ldg	C	2	3	3,165	40	26.6	1	1	2	4
1982	Ldg	C	3	2	1,796	23	84	0	1	3	3
1983	Res	B	3	2	2,156	38	–10.9	0	1	0	2
1984	Cap	C–	3	5	3,261	31	48.8	1	3	1	4
1985	Cap	E	3	2	3,127	24	1	0	1	2	5
1986	Cap	B+	3	4	3,582	39	58.3	1	1	1	3
1987	Prv	D	3	6	5,064	53	93.3	0	1	0	2
1988	Prv	C-	3	2	4,872	27	–47.8	0	1	1	3
1989	Cap	B+	3	11	7,125	61	7.8	0	1	1	2
1990	Prv	D	3	3	7,601	78	–14	0	3	2	5
1991	Cap	B–	3	3	8,099	53	0	0	3	0	2
1992	Prv	D	3	4	7,528	41	64	1	2	1	2
1993	Cap	C+	3	2	3,398	29	75	0	5	0	2
1994	Prv	C	3	2	4,123	53	100	1	2	0	4
1995	Prv	B+	3	3	7,250	78	100	2	6	2	3
1996	Prv	B	3	5	15,289	128	36.2	0	2	1	6
1997	Prv	C–	3	4	12,994	145	12.8	1	10	1	6
1998	Prv	B+	3	4	6,092	73	31.8	0	3	1	4
1999	Prv	B+	3	4	10,019	46	38.2	1	3	1	2
2000	Res	B	3	5	13,596	105	81.4	0	5	2	5
2001	Prv	B+	3	7	6,214	58	49.5	1	4	1	6
2002	Res	B+	2	18	11,959	187	35	1	6	3	8
2003	Prv	C	3	14	16,889	206	51	0	4	2	9
2004	Res		3	16	29,658	253
Av. All		C+			6,197	26	0.37	0.38	2.6	1.1	3.5
Av. Cycle 1		B–			2,526	29	0.32	0.14	1	1.1	2.6
Av. Cycle 2		C–			3,408	34	0.32	0.29	1	1.3	3.1
Av. Cycle 3		C+			6,446	56	0.48	0.57	3.1	0.9	2.9
Av. Cycle 4		B			10,880	106	0.41	0.57	4.7	1.4	5.3
Av. Cycle 5		C (to date)			16,889	206	TBA	0	4	2	9

Notes:
• Location: Ldg = Lodge on outskirts of capital city; Res = remote resort; Cap = inside capital city; Prv = provincial (not capital) city.
• Compliance scores from 1990 to 1995 measure compliance with commitments selected by Ella Kokotsis. Compliance scores from 1996 to 2002 measure compliance with G8 Research Group’s selected commitments. The compliance score for 2002 is an extrapolation from the interim compliance score based on the 2002 interim-to-final compliance ratio.
• U.S.-hosted summits are in italics.
Compiled by John Kirton.

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Notes:
Numbers are the most reliable and mean estimates of news accounts, or where possible, direct evidence from G8 officials.
a. Number of media representatives who successfully completed the accreditation process and had credentials available to them.
b. Number of media representatives who picked up their credentials when they arrived to cover the Summit.
c. Includes those at the Summit and the International Media Centre sites, and those taking part in protests and demonstrations and educational forums such as The Other Economic Summit.
d. Includes those for minor charges such as blocking a highway or providing a false name.

Dimension	2004
G8 leaders present	10
Early departures	1
Outside leaders invited	13
Outside heads of international organizations invited	0
Sessions at eight	4
Hours alone at eight	10
Media accredited [a]	3,100
Media arrived [b]	1,492
Security personnel	20,000
Civil society activists [c]	500
Arrests [d]	15
Personal injuries	0
Property damage	0
Cost of security	US$37 million

	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.

America at the G8: From Vulnerability to Victory at the 2004 Sea Island Summit

America at the G8:
From Vulnerability to Victory
at the 2004 Sea Island Summit