It is perhaps only natural---only human—for us to take
ourselves and our produced artifacts too seriously. Diplomats and other
government officials, for example, fret arduously over mere words. When those
words are etched in governmental or treaty parchment, the effort is
understandable. The flaw of excess is evident in all the time and effort that
go into the joint communiques of international conferences and meetings. I
submit that the real politic at such occasions is much more significant even if
nothing shows from it for some time.
At the March 18, 2017 meeting of the Group of 20, which
includes the E.U. and U.S., the joint statement “became an unlikely focus of
controversy” issuing in “a tortured compromise stating, in effect, that trade
is a good thing.”[1] I
submit that the use of such language is spurious—certainly much less than the
attendees and even their principals back home supposed. The real politic was
instead that the U.S. was “overturning long-held assumptions about
international commerce,” and such transformational change takes time even just
to register in minds ensconced in the status quo. That is to say, the real
shift in power would need to play out in actual negotiations on trade, rather
than in how to word a meeting’s joint statement.
A European official, Wolfgang Schauble, perhaps straining at the meeting to understand the new American position. (source: NYT)
“We thought that it was very important for the communiqué to
reflect what we discussed here,” Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the
Treasury, said at the time.[2]
He added that the historical language was not relevant. I submit that neither
was it important that the joint statement reflect what was actually discussed,
for such discussions—laying out the initial bargaining positions for upcoming
negotiations—had legitimate importance. Yet even such importance was only as “the
first shots,” for the true importance lie in the arduous negotiations to come,
for the tyranny of the status quo never gives up without a struggle. At that
G20 meeting, the American government’s “lack of reverence for existing norms
and treaties” was “particularly unsettling to the change-averse Europeans.”[3]
It is precisely such a struggle that is so important—for real shifts in power
must somehow be accommodated or defeated. In relative terms, the importance of
what to hand to the press after an initial meeting is but a napkin dwarfed by
the real politics underneath.
Therefore, we need not be distraught that the best the Group
of 20 could come up with on that Saturday was this: “We are working to
strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies.”[4]
Such an obvious statement is worth only scant time. Much more important were
efforts of the Europeans to understand—in the sense of comprehending—just what
the new American perspective was, for something new that does not fit within
the existing modus operendi takes
effort to be understood, and only from this basis can real negotiations begin.
1. Jack
Ewing, “U.S.
Breaks With Allies Over Trade Issues Amid Trump’s ‘America First’ Vows,” The New York Times, March 18, 2017.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
