• English Site
• > Germany

The World from Berlin

Where Are the Pro-Capitalism Demonstrators?

With the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm just one week away, anticipation is rising in Germany. Will the meeting be a complete failure? Will the summit dissolve in images of protest and violence? German commentators on Tuesday wonder if it's worth the €100 million price tag -- or all the fuss in the streets.

It wasn't so long ago that nobody outside northern Germany had a clue where the seaside resort of Heiligendamm was. But with the G-8 summit fast approaching -- which will see leaders from eight of the world's most important economies gathering at the Baltic Sea getaway for three days next week -- the world is likely soon to learn a bit more about northern German geography.

Indeed, already, it's hard to open a newspaper without being confronted with pre-G-8 news. Leftist demonstrators are gearing up for a fight. Anti-globalization activists are doing their best to attract attention. The German police have taken a heavy-handed approach to securing the event. And all the while, the eight governments that belong to the G-8 are trying to compromise on issues ranging from global warming to African aid. After a long holiday weekend, German commentators are eager to weigh in on the coming meeting.

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung on Tuesday calls the entire €100 million exercise into question. "Those who protest the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm are unwittingly offering the leaders of the largest industrial countries a compliment. They are showing their faith that the leaders can influence events around the globe.... Anti-globalization activists see the G-8 as a sort of world directorate: opaque, undemocratic, powerful and with destructive goals.... But it's better not to ask about concrete results" from G-8s past.

"Today, too, the problem of unstable financial markets and growing trade imbalances are on the agenda, but the belief on their solvability has disappeared. Hardly a word will be lost over the record deficit stacked up by the US government, and the German G-8 presidency was likewise unable to push through stricter regulation of hedge funds. The economy grows best, believe the Americans and Britons, when it is left alone."

"But the costs (of the meeting) are growing year after year -- and not just monetary costs. How ugly is the steel fence that's been built around Heiligendamm! And how much more serious are the limits on democracy put in place in the name of G-8 security! The problem with the G-8 summit is not that powerful demons gather there. Rather, the problem is that the relationship between input and the output is completely imbalanced."

Business daily Financial Times Deutschland is concerned on Tuesday that the entire summit, hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, could be a failure.

"Just over a week before the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm, the meeting's prospects are not looking good. The summit … could even fail completely if the German government doesn't break a spiral of negativity that is now gaining momentum. The next few days are decisive for Merkel. The issue of climate control is particularly dangerous. The US is showing itself to be stubborn in the negotiations on global warming...."

"It is possible that Heiligendamm will punish Merkel for being uncharacteristically imprudent when she, at the beginning of the year, made the UN report on global warming her top priority. Protecting the climate is good PR, but only as far as one can achieve one's own ambitious goals."

"But the success of Heiligendamm isn't just endangered by the summit's guests. It took the government a long time to realize that wide-ranging bans on demonstrations and draconian police raids against G-8 critics have done nothing to lessen the danger of violent demonstrations during the summit. The concessions made recently by Merkel and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to G-8 opponents seem like a helpless attempt to placate them. The authorities are concerned that the summit will be overshadowed by images of violence. That would in fact be worse than if the summit were brought to its knees by its own members (failing to agree)."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung uses a front-page editorial to sing the praises of capitalism.

"The whole circus of anti-G-8 demonstrations has nothing to do with globalization. If the protesters take to the streets because they see the leaders of the world's leading industrial countries making undemocratic decisions about the well-being of the entire world, then they are grotesquely overestimating the summit. At the same time, they are studiously ignoring that globalization has brought the world unprecedented affluence in the last 25 years.... The responsibility can be laid at the door of exactly that capitalism which the protesters of Heiligendamm execrate."

"The demonstrators of Heiligendamm should be protesting for, not against globalization, were they to take their moral impetus seriously. In all places where countries reject globalization, citizens are cheated out of their development opportunities. That is especially evident in Africa, the continent which tops the G-8 agenda and which the world has tried to help using a planned economy ('development aid') instead of a market economy. The countries of Sub-Saharan Africa have received $600 billion in development aid since their independence. One can hardly speak of a 'forgotten continent.' But the strategy has been a failure."

-- Charles Hawley, 12:45 p.m. CET