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Past Event

A Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development Event

Emerging Challenges: Previewing the G8 Meeting In Russia

Global Governance, International Organizations, Global Economics, Development


Event Summary

Introduction & Moderator:
Strobe Talbott
President, The Brookings Institution

Panelists:
Carlos Pascual
Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution
Kenneth M. Pollack
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution
Clifford G. Gaddy
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies and Global Economy and Development, The Brookings Institution
Johannes F. Linn
Executive Director, The Wolfensohn Initiative; Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, The Brookings Institution
Contact: Brookings Office of Communications
Phone: 202/797-6105

In Late July, leaders of the world's eight global powers gathered in Saint Petersburg for the first G-8 summit hosted by Russia. The summit comes amidst international concerns about developments in Russia, especially its policies on energy, civil liberties and its neighbors. The summit also coincides with a critical juncture in the international community's engagement to address Iran's nuclear program and the broad question of energy security.

Event Information

When

Thursday, July 06, 2006
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Where

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Map

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On July 6, scholars from Brookings discussed the significance of this year's G8 summit and the fundamental questions about the structure of the G8 itself. Brookings President Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state, gave introductory remarks. Participants included Carlos Pascual, former ambassador to Ukraine and vice president and director of Foreign Policy Studies; Clifford Gaddy, senior fellow and Russian economy specialist; Kenneth Pollack, senior fellow and author of The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America; and Johannes Linn, executive director of the Wolfensohn Initiative.

The panel was moderated by Lael Brainard, former G-8 sherpa and vice president and director of Global Economy and Development.

Transcript

STROBE TALBOTT: Perhaps by way of background, I might just recall for everybody how the G8 came to have the number 8 associated with it. Of course, starting back in the 1970s it became a G7, but it is worth remembering that the G actually stood not just for one word, "group," but for a number of words, it stood for Group of Major Industrialized Democracies. The decision to bring Russia into the G8 was not just an exercise in wishful thinking. It was an attempt at what might be called a self-fulfilling prophesy, or as an incident for Russia to continue moving in the direction of being a qualified member of a group of major industrialized democracies.

The responsibility for that decision goes back over at least three administrations. I would say it really starts with the first President Bush and his decision along with his colleagues in the G7 to invite first Mikhail Gorbachev as the last President of the Soviet Union, and then Boris Yeltsin as the first President of a post-Soviet Russia to G7 meetings. Then President Clinton, of course, along with Tony Blair, Helmut Kohl and others, decided in 1998 to bring Boris Yeltsin, and, therefore, Russia, into the G8 as a full member.

There was a high degree of continuity between the Clinton Administration and the current Bush Administration in that regard, and in 2002 at the G8 Summit in Alberta, the group decided to ratchet up, as it were, Russia's membership as an endorsement of the direction in which President Putin was taking that country by agreeing that President Putin would host in Russia this year's G8 Summit. I would venture the opinion, but it will certainly not be confirmed by anything that you hear coming out of St. Petersburg, that all seven of President Putin's guests in St. Petersburg have some regret over their decision in Alberta to give Russia the chairmanship of the G8, and they probably also regret some of the fairly effusive language that they used to compliment President Putin on the direction in which he was taking the country as perceived back then. Carlos will come back to that issue, and I suspect will touch upon it in other contexts as well.


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