• This year's G8 summit in Scotland saw new agreement on a range of issues - but did it go far enough?

• In the June Fabian Review, David Miller, Gill Hubbard and Nicholas Bayne debated whether the G8 is really determined to eradicate global poverty.

NOTE: Spinwatch reproduces the whole debate here, by way of comparison with the censored version published on the Fabian Society website. For the full details of this saga see 'Censored by the Fabians'.

From David Miller and Gill Hubbard
May 9, 16:44
Some particularly unsavoury characters will attend the G8 summit in July. Two of them – Blair and Bush – have been exposed as liars and war criminals. Blair lied about WMD as a pretext for going to war. This was necessary because, as his chief Foreign Policy adviser David Manning put it, Blair had to ‘manage’ the ‘press, Parliament and … public opinion’. Like Blair, Bush was willing to use any old 'intelligence' to justify going to war. The intelligence source code-named ‘Curveball’ was used even though the intelligence agencies thought he was ‘a stinker’, a ‘fabricator’ and ‘crazy’. In the process they killed over 100,000 Iraqis (according to the Lancet) in an illegal war – a war crime by any standards.

Some may say that it is churlish to criticise the summit on the basis that the eight rulers of the world are a bunch of liars and crooks. But their failed policies on climate, Africa, aid and poverty are a part of the problem rather than the solution. Here is one measure of their failure for starters. None of the countries that compose the G8 have upheld their promise to allocate 0.7 per cent of their GDP to aid. This promise was made 35 years ago. Meanwhile, 30,000 children die every day because they go hungry.

From Nicholas Bayne
May 12, 10:15

Dear Gill and David,

Your opening message – like your book – is a vigorous polemic against the G8. But I think you attack the G8 more as a symbol of what you dislike about capitalism, than because of close interest in how the summit works or expectation of influencing it. My view is different, based on a study of the summits since they began 30 years ago. I am an analyst of the summits, not an advocate for them. But I believe that, despite important failings, their role is on balance positive and the world would be worse off without them.

The G8 summit is not a world government and does not aspire to be. The commitments made by the summit only bind the participants – they then have to persuade others of their merits. But they can give a lead – and this explains the summit’s focus on Africa every year since 2001, which Blair is maintaining at Gleneagles. Without the G8’s underwriting of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Africa would not be getting the international attention it now attracts. However, if the G8 members cannot agree among themselves, it becomes very difficult to take wider international action. So Blair will also try at Gleneagles to bridge the persistent divisions over climate change.

Nicholas Bayne

From DM and GH
May 17, 17:53

Dear Nicholas

Unsurprisingly, if disappointingly, instead of engaging with the issues we raise you attempt to dismiss our arguments by describing them as ‘polemical’. On the other hand, you describe yourself as an ‘analyst’ and not an ‘advocate’ for the G8. This is of course not quite the full story. In fact prior to your retirement in 1996 you were a British diplomat fully engaged in the G8 process. You undermine your professed detachment by claiming the role of the G8 is ‘on balance positive’. Indeed, you appear to share the myopic view of the ruling elite that summitry has some meaningful relation to tackling the issues of poverty, war and climate change.

We agree with you on one thing however; the G8 certainly do give a ‘lead’. The G8 are at the forefront of promoting corporate interests globally. The Commission for Africa, which notes that ‘the enabling climate for the private sector’ is ‘at the top of the agenda’ and the New Partnership for African Development are neoliberal charters to open African markets to corporate greed. Meanwhile, half of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa are living on less than a dollar a day and millions die because they cannot afford Western pharmaceutical drugs for HIV/AIDS.

David and Gill

From NB
May 18, 09:59

Dear David and Gill,

Polemics should never be dismissed, especially from Scotland – think of John Knox. I was involved in the summit process for many years, but I can still be critical – think of Clare Short. I do believe the G8 summit can and should work to reduce persistent poverty, hunger and disease in Africa. Elsewhere, especially in East Asia, there is progress towards the Millennium Development Goals – but not in Africa.

The G8 is not neoliberal, in the sense of thinking globalisation can solve everything. It can see that poor countries risk being marginalised. But measures to help such countries cannot be imposed from outside. So the summit works with NEPAD and the African Union – run by African governments – and the Commission for Africa, with a majority of African members.

These bodies advocate building up Africa’s private sector, certainly, as a source of growth. But they also call for more aid for infrastructure, deeper debt relief and better access to markets. Here the summits have fallen short on their commitments – their greatest failing, in my view. The G8 should be pressed to do better, as the Make Poverty History campaign is doing. But G8 governments have to lead in providing aid, trade access and debt relief – no one else can do so on the scale required.

Nicholas

From DM and GH May 18, 15:55
May 18, 15:55

Dear Nicholas,

We are delighted that you agree with us that the G8 should work to reduce poverty in Africa. To date however, there is no evidence to suggest that the G8 is capable of doing so. This is precisely because the G8 is promoting neoliberalism, which we define as an ideology in support of free markets, privatisation, the relaxation of trade rules and the de-regulation of financial transactions, and is imposing these economic measures from the outside. The G8’s geopolitical reach is far and wide and nowhere is this more apparent than in Africa. The evidence indicates quite clearly that those African countries that have opened up their borders to transnational corporations have not seen poverty reduced; any IMF report will show you that. The only beneficiaries appear to be the transnational corporations that make millions due to tax bonanzas and financial incentives. Tanzania, for instance, has seen an increase in foreign investment (see for example the mining industry) in the 1990s but no significant decrease in poverty. The life expectancy in this country still remains at 43 years old. Thus for many people in Africa promises of aid and debt relief come far too late. But what is worse is that the promises on aid and debt come with strings attached. Blair and Brown lead the way in using aid as a lever to open up African economies to Western corporations. This has the predictable result of destroying African producers and increasing poverty, as Christian Aid’s latest report shows has happened in Ghana.

From NB
May 19, 09:38

Dear David and Gill,

You misrepresent G8 policy towards Africa and its motives. It embraces conflict prevention, strengthening institutions, supporting education and health care, infrastructure and environment projects. African countries want efficient domestic markets and financial systems, plus export markets, to escape from the subsistence economy.

You condemn all foreign investment. Oil and mining investment can be abused; the G8-backed Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative seeks to deter this. But Africa is pitifully short of investment, both foreign and domestic, as local savings are leaving the continent. African countries need to attract the billions that now enrich China, to build up their own industries.

Britain no longer puts conditions on aid to well-run countries like Mozambique. Since March it advocates a general removal of conditions. Bush’s Millennium Challenge Account, which has reversed the decline in American aid under Clinton, does set stringent conditions of governance – but the Africans are creating their own standards. There could be lively exchanges on this at Gleneagles.

Africa attracts the most public interest. But let me in closing signal two other useful openings at Gleneagles. One is climate change, where there is a chance to get the US back into the action. The initial results may be modest, but could escape the deadlock over the Kyoto Protocol. The second is handling Russia. Earlier summits have seen tough private exchanges with the Russians, over Chechnya and Kosovo. As Russia will host the 2006 summit, the other members have some leverage, if more tough talking is needed.

Nicholas

From DM and GH
May 19, 19:18

Dear Nicholas,

The argument here does not turn on motives, but we are sceptical about the motives of the G8 and their defenders, like you. This is not because their deeds don’t match their words, though this is true, but because in almost every case they twist language to mean exactly the opposite of the accepted usage. When Brown and Blair say ‘fairer trade’ they mean ‘free trade’, when they say ‘good governance’ they mean the end of democratic governance and the dominance of the market. When they say ‘invest in African universities’, they mean eradicate independent social science and inculcate market ideology. This approach to language has been described by John Pilger as the ‘law of opposites’.

The flaw in your argument about conditions on aid is present in your own words. They don’t impose conditions on ‘well-run’ countries. Translate that phrase into its real meaning – well-run in the interests of western corporations – and you have the reality. Even worse, when they talk of increasing aid, what that means in practice is funding privatisation propaganda campaigns, as War on Want have shown.

You acknowledge the force of our arguments on exploitative ‘investment’. Your palliative is, like all the other schemes listed in the Commission for Africa report, voluntary. There are no penalties and crucially no binding regulation. Such schemes are now systematically used to limit the power of developing country governments to control corporations. Yet again the law of opposites applies.

Leverage and tough talking there may be, but only to sort out the conflicts among the great powers. This has nothing to do with progress in Africa, climate change or human rights. Since you mention it, the case of Russia is instructive. Russian atrocities in Chechnya worsened throughout 2003-4. And British policy? ‘It is not’ notes Mark Curtis, ‘to turn a blind eye to Russian terror: it is to support it’.

So our argument turns on the practical behaviour of the G8, not speculation about their motives. We think it is only sensible to be sceptical of motives however. In your own case, your professed concern for Africa, Climate and Chechnya is rather undermined by the fact that in 1999-2000 you were a corporate lobbyist pushing for the liberalisation of financial markets as chair of the Liberalisation of Trade in Services (LOTIS) lobby group. Do you agree with us that readers of your book should be sceptical of your motives as a result?

David and Gill