Not so long ago consecutive summits of the western powers would have called the world to attention. Nowadays, these gatherings call attention only to how fast and far the west has fallen. If one were looking for a metaphor for a decade of decline, there have been few more telling than the latest summits of leaders of the G8 nations and Nato.
Lest we forget, the opening of this century saw the US cast as an eternal hegemon. Europe struck a pose as the model for a post-nationalist multilateralism that would take root around the world. Fresh from taming Slobodan Milosevic in the Balkans, Nato had reinvented itself as the military guardian of the new global order.
Ten years on, Europe is in the grip of the nationalisms it thought it had banished. The message from the G8 leaders in Washington was that the eurozone remains hopeless and helpless in the face of the banking and sovereign debt crises that have brought a continent to its knees. For its part, the Nato summit in Chicago presented the unedifying spectacle of the world’s foremost military alliance rushing for the exits in Afghanistan.