NOT long after the organisation known as Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) was set up at Canberra’s initiative in 1989, a sceptical Australian diplomat wittily dismissed it as “four adjectives in search of a noun.” At its inception, the group consisted of seven East and Southeast Asian nations alongside Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

The idea, evidently, was to improve the level of American engagement, in the aftermath of the Cold War, with what Australia considered a relatively neglected region.

Since then, Apec’s membership has almost doubled: it now includes China, Chinese Taipei (otherwise known as Taiwan), Chile, Peru and Russia. However, if the organisation’s summit in Sydney last week is anything to go by, its raison d’etre hasn’t become any clearer in the interim: “21 leaders in search of an agenda” is how a senior Australian journalist aptly put it.

Barely two months ago, the host nation’s prime minister, John Howard, had promised that the gathering would culminate in the most momentous agreement on combating global warming since the Rio summit in 1992, which established the basis for the Kyoto Protocol.

Neither Australia nor the US has ratified the protocol and the current governments of both countries remain unconvinced about the impact of human activities on the planet’s climate. They are keen, however, to control the post-Kyoto arrangements, partly in order to ensure that developing nations don’t get away with less stringent targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

It has never been terribly clear exactly what Howard was hoping to achieve in Sydney: although Apec includes the world’s largest emitters, its appropriateness as a forum for anything other than broad discussions on the subject is open to question.

Whatever his motives, there was little room for disagreement when President Hu Jintao made it clear that China would not be party to any attempt to bypass the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Partly as a consequence, the centrepiece of Apec’s Sydney Declaration is an agreement to contemplate the advisability of contributing towards the reduction of greenhouse gases. Its aspirational goals are, at best, completely meaningless. They would be worse than useless if anyone were to read into them the illusion of progress, but there’s little danger of that.

The declaration was equally anodyne in the economic sphere, calling for efforts towards concluding the Doha Round of World Trade Organisation negotiations and pointing towards the desirability of an APEC free-trade zone.

Experience has taught us, of course, that such gatherings seldom accomplish very much, beyond facilitating a degree of social networking among politicians.

But if that is their main purpose, wouldn’t it make greater sense to pack the concerned leaders off to an island resort for a week or so every year?

Last week’s summit was billed as “21 leaders, one great city”, but Sydneysiders were less than thrilled by the Apec encroachment, which entailed the erection of intimidating metal barriers in the heart of the city.

The VIPs who whizzed through the streets in motorcades could have been forgiven for assuming that Sydney had been hit by a neutron bomb, given that ordinary folks were barred from the Apec security zone. The arrangements included snipers on roofs and thousands of police on the ground, including some in riot gear. According to the authorities, this was necessitated by “intelligence” on planned protest marches.

In the event, the only violence was perpetrated by the police themselves, who occasionally — perhaps more out of boredom than in response to any kind of provocation — pounced on unarmed demonstrators, pinned them to the ground, and rained blows on them for no apparent reason.

In at least one instance this treatment was meted out to a middle-aged pedestrian whose only crime was to cross the road. None of this is particularly surprising: given that the centre of Sydney resembled a fascist police state, it was inevitable that some of the foot soldiers would behave accordingly.

What is not clear is the extent to which this overkill was insisted upon by the Americans. One of the first questions George W. Bush faced at a news conference shortly after he arrived in Sydney, fresh from a surprise stopover in Iraq, was why the presence of the leader of the free world entailed so many curbs on freedom in the host city.

Taken aback, he mumbled something vaguely apologetic. He had been considerably less incoherent the previous night when Australia’s deputy prime minister greeted him on the tarmac and asked how things were in Iraq. “We’re kicking ass,” responded the president of the United States.

Bush may have been relatively clear about what he was doing in Anbar province, but the reason for his presence in New South Wales appears to have been something of a mystery to the president, given that he thanked Howard “for being such a fine host for the Opec summit”. He quickly corrected himself but compounded the gaffe by saying he’d been invited by Howard to next year’s Opec summit.

That’s not very likely, given that neither the US nor Australia is a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Bush went on to praise the role of “Austrian” troops in Iraq — a statement that may have raised a few eyebrows in Vienna.

Fortunately for him, the American president wasn’t the only source of comic relief during the Apec summit. Early on, a bunch of talented satirists associated with a television show titled The Chaser’s War on Everything decided to test Sydney’s security firewall by arranging a motorcade bearing the Canadian flag (based on the valid assumption that no one is familiar with the Canadian prime minister’s physical features).

Equipped with obviously fake security passes, they made their way to within yards of the Inter Continental Hotel, where Bush was supposedly staying.

The police only realised something was amiss when one of the comedians emerged from the limousine dressed as Osama bin Laden, fake beard and all.

The authorities were not amused, but for more or less everyone else this light-hearted diversion was the highlight of the summit. (For video clips, visit http://abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/)

There were other distractions, too, not least a timely reminder that the real Bin Laden remains at large, although he too may be relying on fake facial hair. Osama’s 26-minute video prompted an equally silly response from George W, although he was clearly preoccupied with Iraq and this week’s report card on the “surge”, prepared by the White House but channelled through General David Petraeus.

From John Howard’s point of view, however, the least palatable aspect of Apec week was the Australian media’s continued focus on his dwindling political fortunes: for much of the year, the government’s standing in opinion polls has ranged from poor to hopeless, and there are indications that the prime minister may even fail to retain his own seat.

Predictably, awkward endorsements from Bush haven’t helped. Elections are unlikely to be delayed beyond November. Although the majority of Australians reacted to the pointless Apec summit with indifference or irritation, their retrospective view of it may be less unkind if it comes to be seen as a prelude to regime change.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.

mahir.worldview@gmail.com