The Initiative was launched on March 29 in the hopes that increasing border trade would improve the socio-economic situation of the local Pashtun communities along both sides of the impoverished Afghan-Pakistan border, the main base of operation of both the Afghan and the Pakistan Taliban. But the oft-presumed link between poverty and violent extremism has always been suspect, and can anyway be overwhelmed by other socioeconomic forces, such as tribal nationalism and political alienation from the non-Pashtun dominated governments in Kabul and Islamabad.
More broadly, though, G8 leaders should be considering the very future of the institution itself now that the G20—whose members, thanks to its inclusion of Asian economic heavyweights like China and India, account for 85 percent of global GDP—has taken charge of international economic matters.
Canadian Prime Minister Harper and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed strong support for addressing international security, climate change, global health, development assistance and other issues unrelated to addressing current economic problems—the purview of the G20—within the G8 format.
Underscoring this view, Harper told the media that, ‘I think all the leaders at this point would be pretty strong in their view, based on the discussion we had, that the G8 is a pretty essential organization going forward.’
Yet the exclusion of Brazil, China, India from the G8 has led many to challenge the institution’s legitimacy and even relevance. Indeed, the exclusion of China when addressing nuclear threats such as North Korea is especially glaring, and prompted the Japanese prime minister’s spokesperson to suggest that Beijing’s role in the G8 be expanded beyond the traditional group outreach sessions to give it ‘ an even larger sense of responsibility.’
The precise division of labour between the two institutions is evolving, but it appears unlikely that the G20 will forever abstain from addressing international peace and security issues. Like the G8, which also was originally established to manage primarily economic issues but was soon issuing policy guidance on regional crises and transnational threats, the G20 has already found it impossible to avoid addressing security issues related to its predominately economic agenda. For example, the shock of the September 11 terrorist attacks led the G20, then an informal dialogue mechanism on financial policy, to adopt an Action Plan against Terrorist Financing that committed members to work with one another and other international institutions to block terrorist access to financial systems.
All this makes it seem inevitable that G20 members such as Brazil and India, who remain excluded from the G8 and the UN Security Council, will be especially inclined to try to bring additional issues within the G20 agenda to give them a greater voice in the resolution of these many fundamental issues that concern them.
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China, G20, G8, Iran, North Korea
jim
G8 will be dissolved within a decade. It is no longer important since it was replaced by G20.
Christian
The G8 is irrelevant and obsolete!
Zane
Right!.. And I will take your well-informed comment with a bucket of salt.
Simon Walters
It seems clear to me that one of the most pressing issues the major power should focus on is the increasingly heated rhetoric between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed countries with comparable nuclear capabilities. These two states continue to be, in my opinion, the most likely states to use nuclear weapons on each other.