End summits about nothing
Who knew there was a ‘‘summit season’’. Like the Bluff oyster season, or the end-of-the-year Northern Tour for the All Blacks. Turns out there is, and we’re in it.
This week we’ve had the East Asian Summit (EAS) – an offshoot of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) – as well as the G20 and Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec). And not forgetting COP27.
The acronym soup is hard to decipher. Some meetings are more important than others. Only the really important people get invited to the big dos. Like the Oscars.
Unlike the Oscars, where actors give inspirational speeches about peace, we look to these international meetings to actually deliver it. So how has the week gone?
Main takeaway: ‘‘The mere act of everyone being in a room and engaging in diplomacy makes a difference.’’ It probably doesn’t. The days of being satisfied with our politicians and officials sharing carefully calibrated comments so as not to offend international criminals and human rights abusers are numbered.
That’s not to say getting US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in a room at the G20 made no difference. But neither will change direction in the relationship.
I’m not sure how the heads of state at the EAS expected us to react when they solemnly announced there would be no ‘‘communique’’ from their meeting. Did they think this was newsworthy?
I felt the same way I did when it was announced there would be no series 12 of that long-running show I stopped watching in the 1990s when George Clooney left.
Name one ‘‘communique’’ from an international gab-fest in the past few years that has come up with serious consequences for one of its members, after they invade other people’s countries, or kill, lock up and torture their own people.
Compare that with Nato – one of the few international organisations that makes sense these days. Accountability is clear. Nato member Poland requested a meeting as soon as a missile exploded on its soil this week. Under the Nato treaty, members ‘‘will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened’’.
Jens Stoltenberg, Nato secretary-general, has said it appears to have been a Ukrainian air defence missile going astray. If it had been dropped by Russia, then Article 5 and the principle of collective defence would kick in. An attack on one member country is an attack on all. He has also said the explosion was not Ukraine’s fault. ‘‘Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.’’
Most of us would happily trade a ‘‘communique’’ for this kind of practical, moral approach to accountability for lawbreaking.
The EAS communique didn’t happen because Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov refused to let the writers use an offensive word like ‘‘invasion’’. Its ‘‘activities’’ in Ukraine are still a ‘‘special operation’’. Which is like the Germans calling the World War II battle at Dunkirk ‘‘Operation Trip to the Beach’’.
Diplomacy is necessary but not sufficient. Only a radical reimagining of the international system will do. For a start, make international organisations more democratic. Fears about an elite-driven agenda are not entirely irrational.
In 1974, Jean Rey, former president of the European Commission, said of Britain’s referendum on Europe, ‘‘I would deplore a situation in which the policy of this great country should be left to housewives. It should be decided instead by trained and informed people.’’ Over 40 years later, that attitude still lingers in international organisations.
Get rid of the veto in the UN Security Council where one of the five permanent members can stop any decision. Without reform of the veto, public support will collapse, and with it the UN.
This could be done by adding more permanent members to the Security Council to water down the veto. France could agree to vote on behalf of the EU. Or better still, allow a double majority of two-thirds of member countries to override a veto.
The war in Ukraine, once ended, is an opportunity to reconstruct our international system of laws and accountability.
Don’t worry about the communiques. We have a cold war, a hot war, pandemics, climate change, inflation, rogue bombs dropping on Poland. No-one wants to take a leaflet to a gunfight.
The time is overdue for a more muscular international system that gets stuff done, and represents us all.