WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush arrives for the G8 summit of key world leaders in Russia with Washington’s dominance shaken by global instability and the ascent of Moscow and Beijing.
With its military stretched from Afghanistan to Iraq, the United States is forced to court Russia and China to help tackle the world’s most sensitive diplomatic challenges — the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
But both countries are reluctant bedfellows at best, resisting calls for democratization from the Bush administration, which holds that individual liberty is the best antidote to terrorism.
“It has been a difficult three years of US diplomacy and that is reflected in its position in the G8,” said Brookings Institution analyst Jeremy Shapiro.
“Everybody in the world knows that the US is bogged down politically and militarily in Iraq and no amount of effective diplomacy is going to change that,” Shapiro said, noting that while Washington was not suddenly powerless, it was still “weaker than it has been in previous years.”
It was Sergei Ivanov, the Foreign Minister of Russia — which has strong economic interests in Iran — who in May convinced the UN Security Council to offer Iran new incentives for halting uranium enrichment before it took stronger actions that Moscow had fought.
Since then, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — who had lobbied for months in favour of sanctions against Tehran — had been champing at the bit, demanding that Iran respond to the offer before leaders of the world’s most powerful nations meet in Saint Petersburg July 15-17.
When North Korea launched seven missiles last week, including a long-range Taepodong-2 reportedly able to reach Alaska, Washington turned specifically to Beijing to help convince Pyongyang to be more cooperative.
Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator at the six-way North Korean talks hosted by China, appealed the following day on Beijing to be “very, very firm” with its “long-term allies the North Koreans,” before himself flying to the Chinese capital.
In the Middle East, where Washington has long operated alone, it has turned more openly to the international diplomatic quartet that also groups Russia, the United Nations and European Union to deal with the Israel-Palestinian problem.
At the start of May, Rice was forced to ask Russia and the European Union to help ease a financial crisis and organize assistance for the Palestinians, after international aide was frozen following the rise to power of Hamas.
Russia meanwhile has offered to use its ties with Hamas and Syria to help find and release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whose June 25 capture in Gaza led to a new escalation of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
In Central Asia, where US military and economic influence has stretched since the Soviet Union’s collapse, China and Russia are seeking to re-establish their dominance over the resource-rich region by promoting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The group is building up slowly from a diplomatic talking shop to a regional security organization that some see as a future counterweight to Nato.
For Brookings’ Shapiro, Washington’s weight at the G8 will be gauged by whether the leaders adopt a strong, unified stand on Iran — indicating dominance in the US position — or back Russia’s emphasis on energy security regarding Iran, which Shapiro termed “bizarre”.
“Does the summit end up talking about Iran and doing something on Iran, in which case it would demonstrate that US-Russia relationships are going pretty well and the US remains powerful?” asked Shapiro.
“Or do they end up talking about some sort of bizarre Russian definition of energy security, in which case that would be an indication that US influence on Russia is not very strong and that US-Russia relationships are probably headed in a bad direction?”—AFP
