Worst. Plot. Ever.

Over at the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman looks back at the G-20 Pittsburgh summit and thinks that Europe will take over the G-20 process: 

The realisation that the G20 is Europe’s Trojan horse struck me at the G20’s last summit in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago. The surroundings and atmosphere were strangely familiar. And then I understood; I was back in Brussels, and this was just a global version of a European Union summit.

It was the same drill and format. The leaders’ dinner the night before the summit; a day spent negotiating an impenetrable, jargon-stuffed communiqué; the setting-up of obscure working groups; the national briefing rooms for the post-summit press conferences.

All of these procedures are deeply familiar to European leaders – but rather new to the Asian and American leaders whom the Europeans are carefully entangling in this new structure. Watching an Indonesian delegate wandering, apparently carefree, through the conference centre in Pittsburgh, I felt a stab of pity. “You don’t know what you are getting into,” I thought. “You are going to waste the rest of your life talking about fish quotas.” (Or, this being the G20, carbon-emission quotas.)

The Europeans did not just set the tone at the G20 – they also dominate proceedings, since they are grossly over-represented. Huge countries such as Brazil, China, India and the US are represented by one leader each. The Europeans managed to secure eight slots around the conference table for Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the president of the European Commission and the president of the European Council. Most of the key international civil servants present were also Europeans: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund; Pascal Lamy of the World Trade Organisation; Mario Draghi of the Financial Stability Board.

As a result, the Europeans seemed much more tuned into what was going on than some of the other delegations. Puzzling over the new powers given to the IMF to monitor national economic policies in the Pittsburgh conclusions, I was interrupted by an old friend from the European Commission, who recognised the language immediately. “Ah yes,” she said, “the open method of co-ordination.”

Hmmm….. no, I’m not buying this.  Or, to put it another way, if the G-20 is a European plot, then it would be the worst plot since…. insert your least favorite M. Night Shyalaman film here.

Sure, the Europeans are overrepresented at the G-20.  But compare that to the G-8, where (when you factor in the EU), they occupied more than half of the chairs around the table.  The G-20 doesn’t augment the power of Europe — it dilutes it. 

This interpretation fits with what I heard from some of the G-20 participants as well.  There was a surprising degree of common cause between the BRIC economies and the United States in the run-up to Pittsburgh.  Given the outcome, there is an obvious explanation for the BRIC economies’ behavior. 

Why did the U.S. go along?  Washington maintains stronger bilateral ties with each of the other G-20 members than most do with each other.  If one thinks of the United States as the central node in a more networked governance arrangement, then one can see how the reforms made to date do not weaken American influence.  The primary loser, then, is Europe.

Maybe Gideon will be proven correct — it’s certainly true that the Europeans might have a comparative advantage in this kind of diplomatic death-by-detail approach.  On the other hand, the Americans and Russians aren’t exactly newbies at this.  The Chinese and Indians have been moving down the learning curve pretty fast.  And the Brazilians already have a reputation for being diplomats who punch above their weight. 

Developing….