Major issues touched on at G-8 meeting in Japan

By Karl Grobe

FRANKFURT, Germany (DPA): At base, it's a matter of common sense: The foreign ministers of the seven most important industrial nations and Russia ended two days of talks in Japan during which they decided they would like to become more pro- active in preventing conflicts. Why else do states practice foreign policy?

Yet this very noble principle gets watered down considerably in all the small details, which ran the gamut at the discussions from adopting measures against the illegal diamond trade and the uncontrolled spread of small arms, to doing something against child soldiers, and -- why stop there? -- towards alleviating poverty.

Each of those themes is worth a resolute effort on its own, including the United Nations conference the ministers foresee for next year. But international conflicts have different causes, concerning the powers involved and their completely unequal potential to assert their interests.

A lot can be learned about this process by looking at the example of the Balkan crises. The foreign ministers of the G-8 regret Slobodan Milosevic's revision of the Yugoslav constitution that could bestow on him a new period in office, and warn the country against a renewed escalation of violence.

What they were not able to agree on, apparently -- if they even brought the topic to the discussion table -- is whether or not a string of events involving the G-8 members ended up exacerbating the potential for conflict in the region: the conditions of the Rambouillet accords, the way the UN was pushed aside and Russia shut out of negotiations prior to NATO's war in Kosovo and, finally, as it turns out, the establishment of Kosovo as a protectorate.

U.S. plans for a national missile defense system (NMD) and supporting regional defense systems (so-called theater missile defense, or TMD) provide a second example of competing interests and power relations within the G-8.

The plans are by no means dead in the water following last weekend's bungled system test. In lead-up meetings in Miyazaki to the foreign ministers' talks, the Russians, French and Germans all reminded the United States not to forget about more comprehensive efforts towards nuclear disarmament.

And then invisible states numbers nine and nine and a half promptly took their place at the table: China -- the only country among the world's first group of atomic powers not belonging to the select circle of nations -- and Taiwan.

The party leadership in Beijing expressed its suspicions that Chinese containment and U.S. hegemony were the guiding ideas behind NMD and TMD, both to U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen's face and in the overseas edition of the party's mouthpiece, Renmin Ribao. Taiwan, for its part, is bound by its national interests: for reasons of security, it cannot afford to offend the United States.

Still, there are serious reservations across the board about NMD's possible consequences. A supposed increase in military security could -- and probably would -- result in greater political instability. Other states would see themselves marginalised even further than they are now, and would perceive a need to take measures to modernize their weapons arsenals. Understanding "security" as primarily a function of weapons systems leads into dangerous uncharted territory.

The near power equilibrium of the superpowers during the bipolar days of the cold war may have prevented the Big One between the United States and the Soviet Union because of the certainty of mutually-assured destruction, but the rivalry did nothing to prevent even one of the countless smaller wars, from Korea to Congo or Vietnam to Afghanistan.

In fact, the opposite was the case. Without risking much themselves, both countries fought out their ideological battles in proxy wars on foreign soil at a terrible, deadly cost to other peoples. And no one can realistically expect the last remaining superpower to suddenly change its ways when it comes to its own national interests. The U.S.'s paranoid level of security actually necessitates others' insecurity.

That is why some of the ideas coming from the foreign ministers' meeting in Miyazawa may become important again on July 21, when the heads of state of the G-8 countries get together in Nago City on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The signals seem to be headed in the direction of strengthening the UN, concluding further arms control deals (START III), increasing Russia's stature within the group (beyond that of sitting at the children's table from which Boris Yeltsin never got to graduate), drawing certain conclusions from the inter-Korean summit and focusing on poverty relief as mentioned before.

To be sure, the original G-7 represents the rich world and its interests. By virtue of its nuclear arsenal, Russia -- number eight -- belongs to the group of nations that has something to lose. China, the invisible number nine, has something to demand -- as do the other countries of the so-called third and fourth worlds, in particular.

In this context, it is no longer sufficient to proceed from the basis of the territorial unit called a "nation state"; those who possess both wealth and the power of the state have never neglected to use weapons in defending their privileges against their own societies. These are generally the same people who have profited from economic globalisation.

But that is not a subject the G-8 leaders are likely to touch on in their Okinawa summit. They have positions to defend within their own societies, and they want to be re-elected. They are all of them loathe to take on the costs that expanded social -- not just military -- security requires.