G-8 Summit to Give Low Profile to WMD Proliferation Issues

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Nonproliferation issues are expected to take a back seat next week, when the world’s leading industrialized nations gather in Germany for the annual Group of Eight summit (see GSN, May 9).

Previous G-8 meetings have advanced efforts to address WMD proliferation concerns, including a major initiative in 2002.

At the Kananaskis summit in Canada, G-8 leaders announced the Global Partnership against Proliferation of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, a $20 billion commitment to fund nonproliferation projects through 2012 (see GSN, July 14, 2006).

During last year’s meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, the United States and the host nation announced the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism following a bilateral session (see GSN, May 23).

This year, under the agenda set by Germany, the focus has shifted. 

“The main subject is economic growth in the developing world and in Africa in particular,” said Ulrich Sante, spokesman with the German Embassy.  Climate change is also near the top of the agenda.

“Most people I’ve talked with are not really expecting anything of real imagination to come out of the G-8 nonproliferation statement,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The United States had pushed to get Germany and the other G-8 nations to endorse another so-called “10 plus 10 over 10” plan in which the United States would contribute $10 billion and the other seven nations $10 billion combined over 10 years, similar to the nonproliferation initiative reached in 2002.

“The Germans steadfastly resisted that because nonproliferation was not a priority for their G-8 leadership,” Wolfsthal said, adding that the U.S. proposal would have begun in 2012 when the current Global Partnership expired.

 Wolfsthal expects some sort of statement on Iran to emerge from the meeting, “but you could write that in your sleep,” he said.

“The key point is that nonproliferation seems to have fallen off the agenda of this year’s session,” said Richard Weitz, a senior fellow and nonproliferation expert at the Hudson Institute.

Weitz suggested the lack of a focus on nonproliferation at the upcoming summit might be attributable to the fact that divisions among G-8 nations over U.S. plans for ballistic missile defenses in Europe and schisms over how to deal with Iran “do not appear ripe for resolution.”

Another, more sanguine, suggestion might be that with a number of additional nations signing on to the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism in recent weeks “it is not clear what else the G-8 could do at the moment to advance it along,” he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel presented the summit’s agenda, which Sante said was set some time ago, to the Bundestag just last week.

It was disappointing and surprising to some given Germany’s integral involvement in addressing nonproliferation issues in the past, Wolfsthal said.

He added that the summit would probably rise above increasingly strident relations between Russia and the United States over U.S. plans to install missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.

“I don’t expect it to be a major meltdown,” Wolfsthal said.  Germany, he said, has acted as the intercessor between Russia and the United States in the past and will work hard to see that the meeting proceeds smoothly.

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