What America Must Do: A Table for Thirteen

The first international act of the 44th president of the United States must be unilaterally multilateralist. George W. Bush’s successor should announce in his or her inaugural State of the Union Address that the United States will no longer attend meetings of the Group of Eight (G-8) nations until the group adds five more seats to the table. Only if and when the G-8 is reconstituted as the G-13 — adding Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa as full participants — will the leader of the world’s most powerful nation return to the world’s most prestigious club.

At first glance, the initiative could be mistaken as a retreat from the foreign entanglements that have dogged the Bush presidency: a decision by the White House to pull up the drawbridge after the costly interventions of the past seven years. In reality, it would be the opposite: a far-sighted acknowledgment that we are witnessing the most profound shifts in the geopolitical landscape since the 19th century. It would be a recognition that the United States, still the preeminent but now insufficient power, has but one chance to design the architecture for a new global system.

The American president’s chair would not be empty long. Jealous of their own invitation to the world’s top summit, the other present members of the G-8 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia — would fall over themselves to endorse the president’s plan. Thus the rising powers of the 21st century would for the first time join those of the 20th as equals at the same table. In mid-2009, the G-13 would convene as the first international institution to reflect the emerging geopolitical balance of the new century.

This summit, however, would only be the beginning of a bigger enterprise. At the invitation of the president, the first task of the newly constituted G-13 would be to remodel the international institutions created by the United States at the end of World War II to fit the new patterns of global power. The newcomers, in the words of World Bank President Robert Zoellick, would be invited to become "responsible stakeholders" in the international system. The process would begin with a reallocation of voting rights at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and end, eventually, with the expansion of the U.N. Security Council.

The next American president takes office amid the return to the global arena of great-power competition. Inevitably, the United States faces a decline in its relative power even as its economic and military might likely remain unmatched by any other nation for decades to come. The choice for the White House will be between attempting to manage the new rivalries or playing the balancing strategies that led Europe into war in the opening decades of the last century. With wisdom, Washington can retain leadership even as its relative position weakens.

For all the anti-Americanism stirred by the policies of President Bush, U.S. leadership, especially when measured against the alternatives, remains an attractive state of affairs for much of the world. But to be effective, it must be inclusive and seek to reclaim the legitimacy bestowed by an international system based on rules.