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)
The full essay is at "European Officials at the G20."
1. Jack Ewing, “U.S. Breaks With Allies Over Trade Issues Amid Trump’s ‘America First’ Vows,” The New York Times, March 18, 2017.
