The world financial crisis is proving that the G-8, seen meeting in Japan in 2008, is far too limited in its representation.

SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES; YURI KOCHETKOV/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY (BELOW)

ESSAY
JAMES TRAUB


The bloodshed in Gaza underscores how challenging it will be for Barack Obama to realize visions of reshaped global governing structures, like the United Nations.


EVEN BEFORE ISRAEL launched attacks on Gaza last month, Barack Obama’s incoming national security team understood that the demands of dealing with the crisis of the moment could easily eclipse the hopes for a transformation in foreign affairs that Mr.Obama spoke of during the campaign.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, instability in Pakistan and the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran would have been more than enough to crowd out any thought of long-range planning. Now the Middle East is in flames again. And yet a wide range of foreign policy experts are urging the new president to look beyond the smoke and the bloodshed - indeed, to take advantage of a continuous sense of crisis - to reshape the world’s governing structures.

Those structures - the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, among others - date from the end of World War II, when the victors enjoyed a monopoly on economic and political power, and the state system seemed impregnable. We no longer live in such a world. Vivid proof that we don’t came in November, when President Bush, no dreamer of multilateral dreams, convened the “G-20” to deal with the financial crisis.

Until then, the planet’s executive board had been known since it first assembled in 1975 as the Group of 7, or G-7 (G-8, when Russia attended). Robert Hormats, a former Treasury and State Department official present at that first meeting, notes that for a long time the Western powers“could manage the global economy among themselves.
”Now, he says,“it’s inconceivable.”

China is by far the United States’ biggest creditor; emerging nations like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia now account for most of the world’s economic growth. The G-20 will meet again in April. By the time the G-8 convenes in Rome two months later, it may be all but defunct; Italy, this year’s host, is considering whether to throw open the meeting to new members.

Reinvention is in the air. Last January, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain delivered a major speech in New Delhi in which he observed that globalization had brought new powers - like India - to the fore; he called for a new “creation” moment that would include changes in the composition of the postwar institutions and new mechanisms to deal with climate change, poverty, energy and nuclear nonproliferation.

Many major diplomatic figures from both American political parties have been linked to such calls. Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to the first President Bush, says,“We ought to have institutions that reflect the world we live in.”It’s the new realism.

Indeed, the postwar institutions are full of yesterday’s great names. It’s not just Italy in the G-8. Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium all have seats on the I.M.F. board (where they also represent other nations); Singapore and South Africa do not. China does, but it has barely more votes than Canada.

Far more provocative to the developing world is the composition of the United Nations Security Council, whose roster of veto-bearing permanent members has not changed since inception; the West still holds three of the five permanent seats.

Mr.Obama, unlike his predecessor, views the United Nations as an essential instrument of American foreign policy, but he may find his initiatives blocked by third-world bitterness. United Nations experts said he would win himself enormous good will if he openly supported Security Council seats for the current aspirants: India, Brazil, Germany, Japan and perhaps South Africa.

I.M.F. reform will look like a walk in the park compared to the Security Council. The last time the United Nations made a serious run at expanding the council, in 2005, every candidate had its own sworn enemy. Some advocates have suggested that Washington focus first on limiting the use of the veto and only later on inducting new members. Even that, however, would require an enormous diplomatic effort.

What’s more, making an organization more representative does not necessarily make it more effective. The financial crisis has demonstrated the need for new global regulatory mechanisms. Still, what’s the alternative- The West wants China, Russia and the emerging economies to view themselves as responsible global players. That means giving them a stake in the system, and hoping that having stakes will make them better stakeholders.

The advocates of reinvention seem to have the merits on their side. But the central issue for an incoming administration is less,“Is it right?”than,“How much effort is it worth?”How important is it to create and reform these new structures, compared to crisis management?

Of course, the United Nations can wait, while peace in the Middle East can’t. But there is also another way of looking at the question: an administration that wants to work through institutions, as opposed to“coalitions of the willing,”will have to choose between reforming those institutions and watching them decline into irrelevance.

In other words, change is inevitable. The question, says David Rothkopf, a national security expert and consultant who is an apostle of reinvention, is:“Do we allow it to happen at its own pace, uncoordinated, incrementally, or do we see this as an opportunity and produce a new vision for an international system that advances U.S. interests in the same way that the post-World War II vision did for 60 years?”