During a joint press conference on Saturday, July 15 in St. Petersburg, Russia, George Bush told reporters about how he had raised concerns about democracy in Russia during a frank discussion with Russian president Vladimir Putin. “I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there’s a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same,” Bush said. Bush replied, “Just wait.”
Putin responded curtly, “We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly.”
This press conference took place during the Group of Eight’s (G8) summit in St. Petersburg. The G8 is a club that includes the major imperialist nations—the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, France, Germany and Italy—and Russia. Russia, although not an imperialist power, is considered a full member of the group, but is left out of certain meetings, particularly those of the finance ministers.
These eight countries meet every year behind locked doors to decide economic and military policies that affect billions of people worldwide. While U.S.-Russia tensions played out in the weeks before the summit and in exchanges like this one, the official G8 discussions this year focused on energy security, trade liberalization, the so-called “war on terror,” the Middle East and North Korea.
History of the G8
In 1975, ministers of six imperialist countries met in Rambouillet, France, to form an alliance then referred to as the Group of Six. The world situation for imperialism in 1975 was grim. The Soviet Union was still a world power that fundamentally opposed imperialism. The Vietnamese resistance had just won a resounding victory against U.S. imperialism. Africa, Latin America and Asia were hotbeds of national liberation struggles and revolutions that posed a profound threat to global capitalism. On top of it all, the capitalist world was in the midst of an economic recession.
The G6, which has since expanded to the G8, represented an attempt by the imperialists to increase their cooperation and alliance in the face of global resistance.
The G8 is not an international institution similar to the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. It is an elite club of the most powerful imperialist countries and now capitalist Russia. However, this club of countries imposes policies on the world institutions previously mentioned. Economic agencies like the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO do the bidding of the imperialist members of the G8 and maintain imperialist economic dominance over oppressed and underdeveloped nations.
The G8 imperialist countries—namely, the United States and its junior partner, Britain—also maintain an unprecedented level of military domination over the world’s people.
U.S.-Russia tensions simmer
In the weeks leading to the summit, the focus of the western capitalist media had been attacks on Russia for maintaining a level of independence in its dealing with foreign capitalists since it was invited to join the G7 a decade ago, following the overthrow of the socialist government of the Soviet Union. Dick Cheney attacked Russia for backsliding on “democracy.” But any honest observer knows that Cheney means democracy as a code word for “obeying the U.S.”
Although Russia is now a capitalist country with economic ties to the United States, the U.S. capitalists are upset that Russia isn’t doing everything they want. Bush and the U.S. blocked Russia’s entrance into the WTO on the eve of the G-8 Summit. While it emerged from gross underdevelopment to become the second or third largest economy in the world between 1917 and the 1980s, Russia in the post Soviet-era has been largely diminished. In a last-minute bid to win entry into the WTO, Russian negotiators on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, “made a concession and agreed to let U.S. insurance companies enter its market, after lengthy debates,” according to the Russian News Agency Novosti.
But Bush wanted more before allowing Russia to join the WTO. “We have agreed to the opening of foreign insurance companies’ branches, but have insisted that no branches of foreign banks will be opened in Russia,” Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Thursday.
Novosti, on July 14, summarized the situation: “The issue of access to Russia’s financial services market has been the main stumbling block in Russia’s bilateral negotiations with the U.S. on its WTO bid.”
“The U.S. had previously insisted that its banks be granted permission to open branches in Russia, but Moscow rejected the idea, saying the Russian banking system was too weak to withstand foreign competition,” states the Russian News agency
Bush and Wall Street are toying with Russia in its now weakened position. They want Russia to be opened up
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Russia has reasserted state control over its energy resources, imprisoning the private compradore owners of the giant Yukos oil, and has offered some resistance to U.S. and European attempts to delink the former Soviet Republics and pull them into closer relationships with western imperialism. The United States succeeded to dislodge pro-Moscow leaders in Georgia and the Ukraine, but has failed miserably in countries like Belarus.
In addition, Putin recently engineered a thinly veiled crackdown against U.S.-controlled media outlets Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Russia has also moved against well-funded CIA front groups that pass under the cover of non-governmental organizations. Many of these so-called NGOs were primary instigators of the U.S.-backed overthrow of the government’s in Georgia and the Ukraine.
Russia also has ties with China and has sold fighter jets and weapons to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. While these steps are in conflict with the U.S. efforts to impose its own empire on the planet, the Russian foreign policy has nothing in common with the anti-imperialist political program of the early years of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Russian policy today is based on narrow bourgeois nationalism and does not have even a hint of internationalist solidarity with those around the world who are fighting for national liberation or socialism.
None of Russia’s nationalistic measures are meant to benefit the suffering workers in Russia. The capitalist government, led by Putin, has dismantled much of the social benefits that remained from the days of the Soviet Union. But it has also resisted the efforts by the United States to transform the once mighty Russia into a virtual neo-colony.
This year’s summit
The U.S.-Russia conflict was close to the surface both before and during the summit, but other U.S. foreign policy priorities quickly came to the fore when the summit began: Iran, North Korea and the Israeli war on Gaza and Lebanon.
The G8 also invited the leaders of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa to join them for the final day of the summit. Some G8 member countries are pushing for their admittance into the elite club to assert more influence over them, but others, like Germany—a less powerful imperialist country than the U.S. and Britain—oppose any expansion at this time.
The statements on foreign policy that came out of the G8 summit revealed the true nature and intent of the club. While the imperialists attack Iran and North Korea for developing nuclear power, they agreed during the summit to focus on building alternative forms of energy—mainly nuclear power.
On North Korea, the ministers expressed “grave concern” about the country’s recent missile launches and urged Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programs. The G8 leaders also called for North Korea to resume the six-party talks that have been frozen since the beginning of this year.
The most egregious act of the summit was a heavily negotiated statement addressing the expanding war in the Middle East. The statement superficially urged Israel to show “restraint,” but placed blame on Hamas and Hezbollah for the U.S.-backed Israeli war on the Palestinian and Lebanese people. The statement also implicitly attacked Syria and Iran by condemning “those that support” Hamas and Hezbollah.
This is the perspective and politics of the G8 summit. There’s nothing objective and balanced about it. There are political differences among the member countries of the G8 to be sure. But, at bottom, the summit is a closed-door meeting of the ministerial representatives of the capitalist class from the world’s most powerful imperialist nations to negotiate agreements on how better to protect their interests and further exploit the majority of the world’s people—the workers and the oppressed.
