ShareThisBesides protesters, the G-20 Summit itself most likely will see no "drama" or significant agreement on the controversial issues facing the world leaders who will meet here for two days starting Thursday.
That was the consensus of panelists at a town hall meeting to discuss the agenda and the implications of the G-20 Summit.
"For the organizers of these meetings, drama is a bad thing. There tends to be a high level of self-congratulation instead," said James Dobbins, director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center.
A former ambassador to the European Community, who also had troubleshooting assignments in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia, in his 35 years of State Department service, Dobbins said summits like the G-20 are mostly pre-orchestrated events.
It will be no different come Friday evening, when the curtain closes on this G-20, said Susan Schwab, also a former ambassador and U.S. trade representative from 2006 to 2009.
"They will come out and say it was a great success," said Schwab, now a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.
The Tuesday town hall meeting was sponsored by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PNC Financial Services Group at the new August Wilson Center for African-American Culture in downtown Pittsburgh.
One of the key issues facing this G-20, Schwab said, will be the trade restrictions the G-20 member countries have placed upon each other in recent years.
"No country ever rose or sustained economic prominence by imposing import restrictions," she said.
But Post-Gazette Associate Editor Dan Simpson, himself a former ambassador and diplomat in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, disagreed with Schwab's contention.
The health of the global economy will be the one issue that will most likely dominate the summit's agenda, he said.
As a former Canadian foreign minister and chief finance minister under former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's government, Barbara McDougal shared an insider's view of what goes on at the negotiating table of a summit like the G-20.
If there is any drama at this G-20, she said, it will mostly be between the French and the Americans, as has historically been the case with such economic summits, she said.
In this case, for example, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has already promised to walk out if there is no agreement on a cap on executive pay and compensation as the world leaders try to negotiate a global economic recovery, she said.
The panel, which was moderated by Post-Gazette Executive Editor David Shribman, touched on wide-ranging topics from the economy to climate change to the representation of the interests of organized labor, poor African countries and the protesters in the G-20 agenda.
Yesterday's forum was the third in a series of town hall meetings that have touched on the economy and the presidency of Barack Obama.
Asked if the message of protesters at meetings of the G-20, G-8 or the World Trade Organization ever penetrates into the agenda of the meetings, Schwab said it depends on the kind of protest and the message.
"If there is a coherent message of the protesters, it will get the attention of the policy makers," she said. "The problem of the protesters often is that there are too many messages. Policy makers want to listen if it's more than just anger and anarchists."
But there is also bound to be some cognitive dissonance inside the convention center, as some member countries may find themselves adjusting to the politics of the G-20 as an organization, Simpson said.
"I think the most interesting country, if they send a delegation, will be Japan," he said. The Japanese just ousted a government that has been in power "almost as along as the Democratic Party has been in power in Pittsburgh."
E-mail reporter Karamagi Rujumba at krujumba(at)post-gazette.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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