Do-nothing leaders

Being back in the US, I have had a chance to reacquaint myself with American politics — and to be reminded of why I find the American political class so disappointing. The problem isn't just the failure to act; it's a failure to find new conceptual categories for the problems of the twenty-first century. US leaders, in the broad sense, including media elites, have an unfortunate tendency to assume that once the US sheds itself of its Iraq problem (and its Bush problem), it will once again be able to wield power and influence around the world.

The world and the US have changed, however. The unipolar moment is over, if it even existed in the first place. The post-industrialization of the US will continue apace. The democratization of information worldwide will also continue, undermining US military power. As the US is learning, it's harder to use power in a more complex mediaspace that undermines the ability of large organizations to control the information that reaches publics, raising the costs of the use of force. Even as it continues to bolster its military power, the US, beset with economic difficulties, is finding it increasingly difficult to get what it wants globally. (Stratfor's George Friedman addresses the shallowness of the US foreign policy debate in this post at his blog.)

The US political elite, however, is not the only group of leaders fiddling while Rome burns.

Indeed, the G8, struggling to remain relevant in a rapidly changing global environment, is a monument to the collective failures of the leaders of the developed countries.

Tokyo is no exception — Japan's political class might be the world leader in ineffectual leadership. Tahara Soichiro, grand old man of Japanese journalism, calls attention to the government's failures in a short article in the March issue of Liberal Time. His particular grievance is the government's failure to deal effectively with the deepening global economic crisis and its impact on the Japanese economy. His ire is directed at the leaders of both parties, and he actually calls for the dissolution of both the LDP and DPJ — and points to the nascent Sentaku movement as a possible solution to the failures of the Japanese political class.

I think he's unfairly critical of Prime Minister Fukuda. Mr. Fukuda might be of an older generation and might have been ineffectual since taking office, but his keen understanding of the problems facing Japan is unique not just among Japanese politicians, but among G8 politicians more generally. The problem is not individual leaders, but a policymaking process that is a relic of better times, when the greatest task for senior politicians was distributing pork and plum posts to supporters. Indeed, if the Japanese political system was up to the challenge, the rearguard action by the Zoku giin on the temporary gasoline tax would be easily dismissed and the discussion would have from the first focused on how best to use the tax revenue. It is unclear, however, whether the government will accede to the opposition's demand for the end to the road construction earmark.

Changing the system will entail more than just replacing one group of leaders with another. Change must be comprehensive: political, administrative, economic. It is on this point that Mr. Tahara falters. He speculates about which leaders will be capable of doing what must be done — he cites Nakagawa Shoichi in particular (an assessment I don't share) — rather than considering the institutional obstacles to change.

Sarko and Abe

Glamorous romantic life aside, I find the parallels between former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and French President Nicolas Sarkozy intriguing. (I previously explored this theme in this post from last July.)

The parallel came to mind once again when I read this post by Arthur Goldhammer.

Commenting on a recent Sarkozy press conference, Goldhammer wrote:

...The "politics of civilization" was not an idle phrase to be forgotten after the New Year's greetings. Now the borrowing from Edgar Morin is openly affirmed. The intention is to infuse politics with poetry, to eschew the pallid practice of "governance," that wan neologism, in favor of what de Gaulle would have called grandeur. Sarko's grandeur partakes not of glory, however, but of the affective. The words "love" and "value" loom large.

I was immediately reminded of Mr. Abe's efforts to sugarcoat his ideology with "affective" terminology, the most prominent term being, of course, that ubiquitous Abe adjective "beautiful." It seems that like M. Sarkozy, Mr. Abe sought to transcend the "governance" of his predecessors by appealing to the deeper values that he and his comrades believe all Japanese share.

However, one difference is that Mr. Abe, as prime minister, was responsible for "governance" and all the messiness it entails. The grandeur of the French presidency seems to give M. Sarkozy some room with which to muse about these subjects; indeed, it might well be a requirement of the job.

(UPDATE: As noted by MTC in the comments, the more obvious comparison for the frenetic M. Sarkozy is, of course, Mr. Koizumi. Agreed. And M. Sarkozy is obviously a much more adept politician than the hapless Mr. Abe. My point is simply that Messrs. Abe and Sarkozy think about their nations' pasts, presents, and futures in similar terms.)

Meanwhile, in the same press conference M. Sarkozy proposed that the G8 be expanded to the G13, with the new members being Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, India, and China. This might very well make the summit meaningful again, if not more effective (the G8's ineffectualness is, I think, as much a function of overambitious agendas as of the roster of attendees).

I expect that this proposal will not be popular in Tokyo. As anyone who has seen Japanese media coverage of preparations for the July G8 summit in Hokkaido knows, Japanese elites take the G8 seriously. They are proud of Japan's membership and would undoubtedly be extremely reluctant to make this exclusive club that much less exclusive. And given that China would be included in an expanded summit, I can easily imagine that the Japanese government is in no hurry to see group expanded, especially considering China's role in keeping Japan out of that most exclusive of international clubs, the permanent membership of the UN Security Council.

George and Shinzo, together again

So old chums George and Shinzo have gotten together again, this time in Heiligendamm on the sidelines of the G8 summit, to chat about their mounting unpopularity abductions (surprise! Bush still supports Abe's position) and climate change.

I wish, I wish, I wish I could rouse up some interest in what's happening in Germany, aside from the scheduled meeting between Abe and Putin, but I fail to see why the G8 matters. Seriously, when was the last time a G8 meeting had a practical impact on global governance? 1987, when the Louvre Accord helped push Japan's asset bubble to new heights of excess? The past twenty years have seen a dramatic decline in the relevance of the organization, as suggested by this op-ed by former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, one of the founding heads of state. Giscard wonders whether the current composition — the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Japan, and Russia — has significant clout to see its conclusions implemented.

I wonder if that's but one problem, and not even the most significant. The expansion — and growing level of abstraction — of G8 agendas, with the agenda becoming a catch-all for whatever issues the member nations find important to them. There seems to be little acknowledgment of the limits of the resources and will of the countries involved. But the world is too complex, and power too diffuse, to pretend that the G8, no matter how wealthy or militarily capable its members, has the ability to solve even a fraction of the problems that the leaders gather to discuss. (Does anyone really think that more European involvement in the North Korea crisis will bring it any closer to a satisfactory outcome for Japan?)

So the media will continue to cover the summits, because the interaction between world leaders makes for interesting drama — and as for the Japanese media, they love to report on the G8, because it shows Japan as a world leader (hence the ongoing coverage of next year's summit, to be hosted by Japan) — but as far as I'm concerned, the G8 is just another antiquated global forum.