Leadership and Altered Design Could Revive Allied Summit

The seven-nation summit meeting of Western industrial powers is an opportunity for heads of state to air, in genteel tones, their grievances against one another. This year there are many such grievances, centering mostly on foreign trade and the efforts that each nation is making to export its troubles. But, like most of its 12 predecessors, next week’s summit in Venice is unlikely to produce much of merit. With the state that the world is in, this is a pity.

When these annual summits began, at Rambouillet in 1975, there were hopes of turning them gradually into means for coordinating the domestic economic policies of the key Western countries. The idea was both sensible and ambitious. Only if each nation will accept some discipline over its fiscal and monetary policies can there be any effective joint planning for the global economy, try as finance ministers might to tinker with the system.

As has become all too clear, unless the major industrial nations can develop the political courage to pull together, they will surely pull apart. In theory, each of the seven leaders should take difficult decisions, sharing the pain, and justify them at home by reference to the need for accommodating his and her economic partners.

The summits have rarely worked this way, for foreign and domestic reasons. In the late 1970s the second oil shock, plus hyper-inflation and high interest rates radiating outward from the United States, led leaders to look to their own economic defenses instead of a broader effort that might have been more effective in cushioning the effect of turmoil. And letting any key economic decisions be defined by an international grouping would require great political courage at home.

Nevertheless, the economic summits could be effective if they had leadership. That of the United States has been on a steady decline, and the Reagan Administration’s attitude hasn’t helped with its pursuit of domestic economic policies, come what may, and its low priority on cooperating with other countries. Japan and West Germany, which have grown apace in economic power, have not yet developed the political stomach for a major role in global economic management. Nor is it clear that the United States, which has enjoyed the psychological benefits of leadership, would be pleased if Tokyo and Bonn moved to take over.

It may now be too late for this Administration, and difficult even for a successor that is international-minded, to restore U.S. leadership and thus to inject new life into the economic summits. Power has shifted dramatically in this decade, and the Reagan Administration has done little to check the tilt. What is characterized as the Administration’s “unilateralism” may help deal with frustrations about obdurate allies--a “we’ll show ‘em” attitude--but it cuts no ice in gaining their cooperation.

The United States has tried to broaden the scope of the economic summits to include political and security subjects, while France and Japan have been reluctant to see themselves entangled in such issues in this forum. In the Carter Administration, this broadening of scope was designed to organize support in foreign-policy areas where allied help was needed. To the Reagan Administration, the foreign-policy aspect is an opportunity to exercise summit leadership--which it won’t provide in painful economic decision-making.

In Venice, the shifts in power will be apparent in both economic and security issues. The West German government has just given the United States what it wants on a Euromissile agreement with the Soviet Union. That was predictable. No West German government can take a nuclear decision or oppose the United States on strategic matters. But on the question of West Germany’s reflating its economy to help with the U.S. trade deficit, a far more important U.S. goal, President Reagan will gain little more than pieties masking West Germany’s silent scorn for U.S. unwillingness to face economic realities.

Nor will the President gain much allied support on the country’s new security project of defending neutral shipping in the Persian Gulf. Just as he got mostly lip service from his summit partners last year on the issue of Middle East terrorism, he will get less than he demands this year. The reasoning is the same. Almost without exception, the allies believe that the threat is not that significant, that the United States is overreacting, and that the remedy could be worse than the disease. In both cases--terrorism and the threat to Persian Gulf shipping--the allies are right, but they will be made whipping boys in the United States if they do not accede to the “Washington knows best” attitude.

If the Venice gathering isn’t very promising, its successors could be made more effective. What is needed is a return to the original vision of a group that can strengthen the political spines of each leader by their all taking difficult economic decisions for mutual benefit. Also needed is U.S. leadership that sees the summit meetings as tools of policy on common concerns more than public relations. Otherwise they will continue to be little more than what the British call “talking shops.”