Pro G8 Summit

If a group of nations is responsible for more than two-thirds of world trade and pays more than three-quarters of the world's financial aid, why shouldn't those countries meet to talk to one another? What's the problem with analyzing the world economic situation to identify potential problems and come up with solutions? Is it wrong to invite representatives from Africa, China and India and start a dialogue?

Admittedly the G8 needs to bridge the gap between world leaders and ordinary people. The last time, Germany hosted a G8 summit, in Cologne in 1999, then-US President Bill Clinton was able to walk outside his hotel and visit a brew-pub.

But in the wake of the riots in Genoa in 2001, not to mention the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the world has changed and the barriers have gotten much higher. But that's no reason for world leaders not to talk about initiatives to relieve poverty or to fight AIDS and other deadly diseases.

There's no way to solve all the world's problems in three days. But the summit is the first step in a process that will be continued on various levels around the world.

Moreover, globalization is not a G8 invention. Arguably, globalization began in 1620 when the first shipment of tea arrived from Japan in the port of Amsterdam. Globalization is not some outside phenomenon afflicting the world, but something that we, as world citizens, can influence and direct.

That's a fact many of the demonstrators choose to ignore. Blaming the G8 for everything that's wrong in the world is what's wrong. Heiligendamm is just a symbol for a collection of problems that have no one address.

For that's reason, it's foolish to oppose the G8 summit in knee-jerk fashion. We no longer live in a world of clearly defined good and evil.

Or to pose the question the other way around: Would the world be any better a place, if there were no G8 summits?

Henrik Böhme is a business editor at DW Radio (jc)