Who Needs the G8? Why should the new powers of the 21st century listen to yesterday's elite when they won't even play by their own rules?

Byline: Denis MacShane (MacShane is a Labour M.P. and a former minister of Europe in the U.K.)

If the G8 did not exist, would anyone want to invent it? the forum started in 1975 as a fireside chat among six national leaders, all of whom spoke English. That was in the good old days when communism still ran half of Europe, the Chinese rode bikes and terrorism consisted of local affairs containable in obscure corners of the world like Ulster, Sri Lanka or the Pyrenees. Canada later muscled its way in, and the president of the European Commission got himself invited as an observer. The seven became the eight when Russia--whose economy ranks somewhere between Sweden and the Netherlands--was added in 1997. The guiding principle of the G8 has always been Churchill's maxim that "jaw-jaw is better than war-war." And it's true that no G8 member has declared war on a fellow member of the club.

But what has been achieved? While ostensibly reducing suspicions among the world's most powerful nations, the confabs have only deepened global suspicions about their leaders. In recent years G8 meetings have spawned horrifying, violent demonstrations from Genoa, Italy, to Evian, France, where the poor Swiss watched as the nearby cities of Geneva and Lausanne were trashed by anti-globalization protesters. Far from convincing citizens that such world leadership enhances economic security and political stability, the G8 has become a symbol of how a tiny, self-selected group of leaders can no longer come up with answers adequate to today's challenges.

Where before there may have been virtue in forging a common anti-communist front, the world's leading economies can no longer solve their biggest problems on their own. Europe, for example, is facing a tsunami of economic migrants and refugees fleeing political disaster and potential genocide in Africa. But no African sits at the G8 table. Nor is Latin America represented, despite the pressure of south-north immigration in the United States. As a result the rich, northern, nearly all-white leaders meeting in St. Petersburg appear better at defending established interests than at helping to manage the world.

Where G8 leaders could have an impact, they no longer do. The first meetings of the G6 were fire- or poolside chats. The event was what mattered, and minds could really engage in the clubby atmosphere. Now the top-rank diplomats who ...