This week’s G7 summit in Germany is reminiscent of Mark Twain’s apocryphal joke that “history does not repeat itself, but rhymes.” Or swap if you like Santayana’s familiar (and authentic) axiom: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
This G-7 should be assessed as the worst G-7 encounter since the one in Japan in 1979, which also took place against the backdrop of the global energy crisis and rising inflation. The other factor that these two summits, with a difference of 43 years, have in common: the American president outside lunch.
Both the 1979 meeting and this week tried to create a cartel for the oil buyer to restrict oil imports, but with opposite goals. In 1979, the G7 wanted to restrict imports from the Middle East (the attempt failed immediately). Today, the G7 wants to limit imports from Russia (through indirect means of “price restraint”, which is the same as a quota), while asking the Middle East and especially the dominant producer Saudi Arabia to increase oil exports to the west.
As in 1979, when other G7 leaders were harsh on Jimmy Carter at the summit, this week France’s Emmanuel Macron tried to gently inspire Joe Biden, who seems to be trying to emulate all the mistakes in Carter. On the eve of President Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia to seek more oil production, Macron advised Biden that the Saudis and other leading Gulf producers are close to the current maximum capacity and as such cannot save Biden, even if they want to.
President Joe Biden and world leaders from Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, as well as the leaders of the European Council and the European Commission, attended a working session during the G7 leaders’ meeting. Brendan Smyalowski / Pool Photo courtesy of AP President Joe Biden and President Emmanuel Macron attends the G7 Summit on June 27, 2022. Lucas Bart / Poole via AP
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stepped in to save Biden what would have become a public disgrace, as Macron’s council’s implication was that the United States must come together, beginning with the search for our own oil help resources.
It should be noted that France is serious about energy, unlike its neighbor Germany, which faces a real risk of running out of natural gas next winter. Unlike Biden, the French government does not carry out demagogic attacks on its giant oil companies and recently announced its intention to build a new generation of nuclear power plants.
While Biden is undoubtedly sincere in his desire for the G7 to unite behind tougher sanctions and boycotts of Russian energy, he seems to ignore the fact that Europe is looking for a lifeline to ease existing sanctions that threaten to harm of their own economies more than the Russian.
Another parallel between Biden’s position and Carter’s dark years: Saudi Arabia has good reason to be deeply dissatisfied with the United States both times. In 1979, Saudi Arabia was outraged that the United States had backed down – even encouraged – the Shah’s fall in Iran, handing over Iran to radical Islamists who had since destabilized the Middle East.
The Saudis are outraged that Biden calls them moral monsters one day and comes to beg for more oil at a lower price the next day, while renewing futile talks with Iran, which will have only one way out – a nuclear-armed Iran.
The Saudis have always determined their oil policy, taking into account the Saudi self-interest, and now they will do it again, although they can enjoy the spectacle of another stupid American president bowing and scraping in front of them. They may even long for Jimmy Carter’s good old days, as sometimes it seems that Biden’s project is to make Carter look good in comparison.
Stephen F. Hayward is a full-time scientist at the Institute for Public Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of a new biography, M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom.
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