With apologies to Global Dashboard readers who don’t live in New York (bad luck you!) here’s an invitation to an event at NYU next week.  On Friday 10 February, the Center on International Cooperation is hosting a launch for ECFR’s European Foreign Policy Scorecard from 9.30am-11am at the NYU Law School.  Speakers include:

• Scorecard co-editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Justin Vaïsse!
• Former head of UN peacekeeping and foreign affairs guru Jean-Marie Guéhenno!!
• James Traub, superstar essayist for the New York Times and Foreign Policy!!!
• Me.

This is an open event.  Fuller details and an address for RSVPs are available here.

 

ECFR has just launched the second edition of its European Foreign Policy Scorecard, which gives the EU grades for how it dealt with different international challenges over the last year (full disclosure: I am a minor contributor to the project).  Here are the headline scores and analyses:

• China (overall grade ‘C’) – Europe hoped to strengthen its approach to China in 2011, but Europe’s crisis turned into China’s opportunity, with European nations fighting each for Chinese markets, investments and cash.
• Middle East and North Africa (C+) – The Arab Awakening took everybody by surprise, but EU member states have so far failed to deliver on the promised ‘money, markets and mobility’. Libya highlighted some European divisions, and EU leaders have not yet developed a long term approach to the region.
• Russia (C+) – The EU achieved an impressive degree of unity when dealing with Moscow, and there were concrete results in areas like trade. The impending return of Vladimir Putin, however, is ending a period of wishful thinking over its engagement with Russia.
• United States (B-) – The US ‘leadership from behind’ in Libya showed that some European countries could play a dynamic international role and cooperate with the US. But it also revealed serious shortcomings in European capabilities, as the US starts pursuing its Asia First strategy at the expense of interest in Europe.
• Wider Europe (C+) – The EU achieved progress on issues such as enlargement in the Western Balkans, but relations with key regional player Turkey were (again) deeply troubled. There were only limited results in relations with Eastern Partnership countries.
• Multilateral issues and crisis management (B) – Securing a legally binding deal on reducing carbon emissions at Durban was one of several qualified European successes. But the efforts to stabilise the euro zone overshadowed these, for instance in the troubled G20 summit in Cannes.

There’s a great interactive website for the report here.  Enjoy!

Tuesday should be a dramatic day in the UN Security Council.  Hillary Clinton, William Hague and Alan Juppé are all jetting in for a debate on Syria and the Europeans are set to table a resolution calling for a political transition in Damascus that Russia is determined to veto.  China will probably do so too.  Smash, bang, wallop.

What are the Europeans up to here?  Last week, I published a commentary for the EU Institute for Security Studies summarizing the European strategy towards Syria:

European policymakers have recognised that they are not best-placed to mediate a final political settlement to the crisis. Instead, they have ceded political responsibility to the Arab League, which has gradually hardened its stance against Assad and has even called for him to stand aside (although the League has not been firm enough for some of members, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia). Meanwhile the EU’s policies have included (i) backing UN and League attempts to monitor the situation in Syria in an effort to restrain the Assad government; (ii) putting pressure on Damascus through sanctions; and (iii) using debates at the Security Council and the wider UN system to reinforce the case for pressure. 

Even though the Security Council debates have rendered almost nothing concrete (except for a mildly worded presidential statement cooked up by the IBSA countries last August) the Europeans have arguably utilized the UN route quite cleverly:

Although frustrated by Sino-Russian obstructionism, European diplomats have chosen to use the Security Council as a platform to publicise the case against Assad. In October, having tried to find compromise language on sanctions, they tabled a mildly-worded resolution in the knowledge that China and Russia would veto it. This ostensibly self-defeating strategy (which the U.S. had doubts about) has at least pushed Moscow and Beijing to try and legitimise their defense of Damascus. Russia has served up a series of resolutions of its own, calling for an end to violence but making no reference to sanctions. 

In the meantime, resolutions condemning Syria’s actions have been passed by large majorities in both the Human Right Council and UN General Assembly – forums that are usually hostile to Western positions. In the final quarter of 2011, the Arab League used the threat of pushing for Security Council action (as it did very effectively over Libya) to persuade Assad to accept its observer mission. 

So even if Russia and China use their veto again this week, the Europeans will keep coming back to the Council for public relations reasons.  I think this is a cunning strategy, although it will fuel talk about the decline of the Council as a serious decision-making body.  It’s remarkable to think that it’s only ten months since the Council was being praised for OK-ing the Libyan campaign.

European ministers are meeting today to discuss an oil embargo on Iran.  The run-up to the meeting has been dogged by reports that some impoverished EU members – notably Italy and Greece – have questioned the initiative.  The Iranians may think that the EU won’t do them real damage, as I point out in a new column for E!Sharp:

There is a general impression that the EU would not hurt a fly.  Instead, it might launch a strategic partnership with the fly, hold annual meetings with the little creature, and possibly fund a Brussels-based think-tank to produce a report entitled “Achieving a Sustainable EU-Fly Relationship by 2025”.

That is the image that many EU officials want to project.  “The strength of the EU lies, paradoxically, in its inability to throw its weight around,” Catherine Ashton declared in February last year. “In short, the EU has soft power with a hard edge – more than the power to set a good example and promote our values. But less than the power to impose its will.”  Yet the EU was throwing its weight around just then.

The EU’s top target one year ago was Laurent Gbagbo, who was refusing to accept the UN’s decision that he had lost elections in Côte d’Ivoire in November 2010.  A brutal but wily operator, Gbagbo had unleashed thugs on his opponents, menaced UN peacekeepers and bamboozled African mediators.

But the UN had mandated sanctions against his regime and the EU took the lead in implementing them.  In a very un-European moment of nastiness, Ashton’s spokesperson told a reporter that the “priority is on the economic asphyxia of Gbagbo’s regime.”  When I read that menacing line, I wanted to cheer.

Things turned out pretty badly for Mr Gbagbo, who was undercut by the EU sanctions and is now at the ICC.  The Syrian regime is also struggling with Euro-sanctions:

The EU first imposed sanctions on individual Syrian officials as violence in the country escalated in May last year, but raised the stakes by deciding to stop importing Syrian oil in the autumn.  Although the Syrian regime has held on to power – and continued its vicious campaign against protestors – the EU’s sanctions have had an impact.  Companies like Shell have pulled out.  With its energy sector under siege, Damascus has struggled to supply its own population with fuel.  The Financial Times reports that the price of subsidized cooking gas for normal Syrians had now tripled.

Syria’s President Assad has accused the Europeans of persecuting innocent civilians.  Nobody should be proud that poor Syrians have been affected by the price hikes – even leaving ethical issues aside, it is arguable that some citizens feel greater solidarity with the regime in the face of EU pressure.   But Côte d’Ivoire and Syria both show that, at least when it comes to sanctions, the EU has more than “soft power with a hard edge”.  It has straightforward hard power – even if it is economic not military.

Iran is, of course, a rather tougher target.  But the EU may do it real damage.

As everyone starts to freak out about what it would mean for the UK – with its high gas import dependency on Qatar and low gas storage capacity – if Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz, Chatham House’s Paul Stevens has a useful corrective in this morning’s FT. There are two key reasons why Iran is unlikely to try to block the Straits, he argues:

The first reason to believe Iran might stop short of closing the strait is simply because such a move would fail. Cutting off Gulf oil supplies represents an existential threat to the west that it would have to use force to counter. The response, if transit were seriously threatened, would rapidly degenerate into a shooting war between Iran and the US supported by many of its allies. While oil prices might reach unprecedented new levels, the US Navy would quickly restore access.

The second reason is that a serious threat to close Hormuz is arguably the principal Iranian deterrent against a military attack by the US or Israel on its nuclear facilities. So to use it in response to an EU oil embargo would be using that proverbial sledgehammer to crack a pistachio nut.

And in any case, he goes on, “Iran does have other options to retaliate. It could intensify pressure on oil prices by contributing to the instability in Iraq that has followed the US troop withdrawal as the Shia ruling clique has begun a de facto war of attrition against the Sunnis.”

All this said, Stevens is also heavily sceptical about whether the EU’s embargo on Iran will actually work:

History is littered with failed oil embargoes, ranging from Cuba, Rhodesia and South Africa to the embargo against Iraq after 1990.It is also worth highlighting that an EU oil embargo would greatly strengthen the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad at a time when it is under considerable pressure, especially with the parliamentary elections looming in March. Unemployment remains high, as does inflation, which has been greatly aggravated by the removal of many price subsidies in the past twelve months. Also in the past few weeks, the value of the Iranian rial against the dollar has fallen dramatically.

Whatever you think of French politics – or ratings agencies – this is a super front page:

Observers from the Arab League are now in Syria to check whether the Assad regime fulfills its promise to pull the army out of urban areas.  Fifty observers have arrived, and there may eventually be up to 200.  This is not the first time the League has deployed a peace operation (it sent troops into Lebanon in the 1970s, as I noted in a piece for the National earlier this year) but it’s still a pretty unusual initiative.  The exact make-up of the observer mission is a bit of a mystery: it’s being led by a Sudanese general, but it’s been reported that it will include human rights experts and members of NGOs as well as security personnel.  The Syrians will take care of the observers’ security, or so they say.

Can this type of mission, which is only able to observe and report rather than directly protect civilians, make a difference?  Just before Christmas, the U.S. Institute of Peace published a paper by me entitled Political Missions and Preventive Diplomacy, which looks at what international missions can do to avert potential conflicts in periods of latent and escalating tension.  In Syria, the situation has shifted from “escalation” to the verge of civil war.  What can observers achieve at a moment like this?  In the paper, I highlight one precedent: the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), deployed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1998. The mission observed but could not stop the violence that led to NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign:

In October 1998, the OSCE was mandated to deploy the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) to oversee a cease-fire and supervise elections in the then Yugoslav province after a year of mounting violence. The request followed negotiations between Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke, but American-led talks were still ongoing. Both the Yugoslav security forces and Kosovo Albanian guerrillas continued to operate, and Yugoslav atrocities eventually made it impossible to continue talks. In these unpromising circumstances, the KVM was expected to deploy “2,000 unarmed verifiers.”

The operation stumbled along unhappily…

The KVM initially had a high level of access to Yugoslav military facilities, but its presence proved insufficient to halt continuing violence. The head of mission, U.S. diplomat William Walker, tried to involve the mission in human rights and political affairs. But its personnel tended to focus more narrowly on military matters, and less than a tenth of the verifiers were assigned to human rights duties. This is unsurprising given the instability of the situation. Concerns for the mission’s safety also resulted in the deployment of a NATO extraction force in neighboring FYROM. The mission’s detachment from the faltering diplomatic process meant that it never developed a clear sense of purpose [and it was] withdrawn from Kosovo in January 1999 prior to NATO’s air campaign against Yugoslavia. The KVM did, however, continue to assist refugees from Kosovo in FYROM for some months, both advising humanitarian agencies and compiling a record of human rights abuses that had taken place during the crisis. The KVM experience suggests that once a crisis has reached its peak, the presence of external monitors alone is unlikely to affect decision makers’ choices.

This precedent doesn’t exactly suggest that the Arab League observers can make a great impact on Syria – not least because they will have far fewer personnel to cover a significantly greater area, and there is no extraction force to help in a crisis.  Looking at the lessons from the KVM and other missions in my USIP report, I’d have three bits of advice to the League:

(1) Ensure that observers’ reports are full, clear and detailed – and get to the top levels of the League fast.  It’s all too easy to let reporting standards drop under pressure or for officials in the field to succumb to “happy reporting” (emphasizing positive aspects of cooperating with the authorities in an effort to sustain access).

(2) Maintain political pressure while the observers are at work.  It’s important that the Syrian authorities don’t exploit the presence of observers on their territory to slow down negotiations towards a lasting political settlement.  It would be very easy for Damascus to drag out negotiations by arguing over details of the observers’ mandate (by repeatedly blocking access to sensitive sites for example).  Arab diplomats must keep up political pressure for a lasting deal between the government and opposition, rather than hoping that the presence of the observers will restore calm.

(3) Have a credible exit strategy.  League officials must make it clear to Damascus that they will withdraw the observers if their freedom of movement is curtailed or their ability to report objectively is compromised.  The Syrian leaders should be aware that there will be strong penalties for failing to meet their commitments, and that the observers are only a temporary mechanism for confirming that they do so.   Having the observers in Syria is not an end in itself, and should never become one.

And it’s tidings of comfort and joy… but not for the Security Council.  On Thursday, Russia proposed an investigation into the casualties of NATO’s Libyan campaign:

Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said a council-mandated investigation was essential “given the fact that initially we were led to believe by Nato leaders there are zero civilian casualties of their bombing campaign”.

US ambassador Susan Rice, who stepped to the microphone after Mr Churkin, responded: “Oh, the bombast and bogus claims. Is everyone sufficiently distracted from Syria now and the killing that is happening before our very eyes?  I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that this is something of a cheap stunt to divert attention from other issues and to obscure the success of Nato and its partners – and indeed the security council – in protecting the people of Libya.”

And just in case anyone had missed that episode, Russia enlivened matters on Friday by tabling the latest draft of a cunning resolution on Syria that expresses concern about the situation without imposing any penalties on Damascus.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow had limits on how much it would accommodate the demands of the European and U.S. delegations, which would like the 15-nation council to threaten sanctions on Damascus over its nine-month-old crackdown on protesters.

“If the requirement is that we drop all reference to violence coming from extreme opposition, that’s not going to happen,” Churkin told reporters.  “If they expect us to have arms embargo, that’s not going to happen.  We know what arms embargo means these days. It means that – we saw it in Libya – that you cannot supply weapons to the government but everybody else can supply weapons to various opposition groups.”

This is like a family Christmas from hell.  If you want to understand why it’s so nasty, turn to a short paper I published with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung this week entitled The Security Council’s Credibility Problem.  It explains how the Libyan and Syrian crises left the Council divided, with everyone having something to be cross about:

(1) Western officials believe that China and Russia’s refusal to countenance serious Council action against Syria has made the Council look impotent. They also complain that Brazil, South Africa and India have avoided tough decisions at the UN, abstaining in important votes on Libya and Syria. They conclude that these five BRICS countries are more concerned with constraining the West than resolving crises through the Council, and that giving them more power in the UN would be risky.

(2) Non-Western officials counter that the U.S. and its NATO allies did greater damage this year by converting the Council’s mandate for a humanitarian intervention in Libya as a pretext for regime change. They claim that their refusal to support even mild UN sanctions against Syria stems from the Libyan experience, and that the West cannot be trusted to implement UN mandates faithfully.

(3) For those who value the Council as a mechanism for ensuring international peace and security, the last year has been depressing for more fundamental reasons. Its limitations as a crisis management tool have been obvious. In recent years, there has been much talk in Council debates of shifting from “reaction” to “prevention”. Yet in the Libya case, its efforts to prevent the conflict escalating failed miserably and the Council’s only option was to mandate an ad hoc military campaign. It is unclear that the Council would have performed any better over Syria, even if there had been a consensus on how to act. The crises of 2011 have revealed major gaps in the Council’s capabilities.

This soap opera will, I suspect, continue to throw up surprises in 2012.

From Reuters, this little gem:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev caused shock and jeers on Wednesday after an obscene insult directed at political opponents appeared on his official Twitter feed.

The Kremlin chief and his more powerful mentor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have been facing growing opposition to their rule by protesters who say parliamentary elections on Sunday were not fair.

The offensive post appeared to have been retweeted on the MedvedevRussia feed at 33 minutes past midnight, according to cached copies of the feed and a notification of the post received by a Reuters reporter.

“It has become clear that if a person writes the expression ‘party of swindlers and thieves’ in their blog then they are a stupid sheep getting f****d in the mouth ” the post read.

What a day. Five observations:

1. My initial reaction this morning: On a sinking Titanic, the UK is lobbying to avoid further damage to the iceberg.  If David Cameron was motivated mostly by his wish to suck up to the City (and to his backbenchers), then he deserves all that fate can throw at him. He has transformed eventual British exit from the EU from Eurosceptic fantasy to the new conventional wisdom in just 12 hours. Quite a feat.
2. But maybe… his government has decided that the euro is now doomed and has made a rational decision to swim as far from the vortex as possible. Many believe that a disorderly break up of the single currency has become more likely than not. That would probably cost the UK 10% of GDP and make British default a near certainty. But if that’s what’s going to happen, then we better knuckle down to being as resilient to the shock as possible.
3. The British veto makes euro failure more, not less, likely. In theory, agreement between a core group is easier than having all 27 countries in the room, but the legal complications of conjuring a new set of institutions from thin air are daunting. Also, expect the core to shrink as the summit’s aspirations are chewed up by domestic politics. Each defection will provide a potential trigger for wider breakdown – probably when a group of the strong decide all hope is lost, and make a collective rush to the lifeboats. By being the first to desert the ship, Cameron has made it much easier for other European leaders to follow.
4. Contingency planning must now go much deeper. Behind the scenes, governments are playing out failure scenarios, and most big businesses have some kind of post-euro plan in place. Much of the thinking is still pretty rudimentary, however. The eurozone countries can’t risk letting markets see them flinch and have to put a brave face on their prospects, but the UK no longer needs to have such scruples. What exactly would we do if the euro goes down? What would be thrown overboard? What, and who, would be saved? How can the government organise effective collective action as the catastrophe hits?
5. Nick Clegg is dead, politically. That was already true, but I can’t imagine even Miriam González Durántez now plans to support her husband at the next election. Paradoxically, accepting his terminal status could give Clegg new freedom of action. Instead of continuing to play the role of coalition gimp, he should offer leadership to those keen to explore what comes after the storm. Politicians with proper jobs – Cameron, Osborne, even Cable – are going to be overwhelmed by events throughout this parliament, even in the best case where Europe struggles back onto its feet. Clegg, though, has an opportunity to focus energy on the longer term. He’ll still lead the Lib Dems to electoral Armageddon, but catalysing a vision for renewal might make posterity a little kinder to the poor man.

Few journalistic cliches are as irritating as the trope of describing some war-ridden country as “the size of Texas” or “three times the size of France”.  I recall being taught at school that an area of rain-forest “the same size as Wales” was being burned every year in Brazil.  Some wit asked if it would be possible to burn Wales instead.

Most of these comparisons are pretty meaningless because it’s reasonably hard to keep exact data on the size of France, etc., in your head.  Now, however, the BBC has come up with a useful graphic to prove that the Democratic Congo is “around two thirds the size of Western Europe.”  Nasty choice of color-scheme, though…

A new report from ECFR on Russia makes startlingly depressing reading:

• The economic crisis has exposed a governance crisis inside Russia: even Putin now admits that as much as 80% of Kremlin orders have been ignored in the regions. Instead of modernising, Russia in 2010 was as corrupt as Papua New Guinea, had the property rights of Kenya and was as competitive as Sri Lanka.

• The crisis has also prompted a foreign policy rethink inside Russia: Russia is now aiming for a low cost sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space and is increasingly nervous about China.

The report claims that, having tried to project itself as an equal to Brazil, India and China, Russia is now entering a “post-BRIC” phase defined by deep pessimism about its future prospects.  The report repays very close reading.

I was dismayed to read the Telegraph’s account of the Foreign Office’s forward planning for the collapse of the eurozone. Apparently, ministers are telling embassies to expect riots on the continent, and a flood of British citizens heading home for Blighty, in tubs and dinghies and pedalos. There was cheeriness from the FT’s Wolfgang Munchau as well, who wrote on Monday, in an upbeat piece called ‘The Eurozone only has days to avoid a collapse’:

If the European summit could reach a deal on December 9, its next scheduled meeting, the eurozone will survive. If not, it risks a violent collapse. Even then, there is still a risk of a long recession, possibly a depression.

The Guardian’s political blog tells me the Treasury is already ‘hard at work’ on a contingency plan:

They are losing sleep over fears of a run on the banks in Italy and some of the other troubled eurozone members. This is what one Treasury source told me: “The five to midnight scenario will be a run on the banks in Greece, Italy and Portugal. Spain is fine. There is already a drawdown from banks. But we haven’t got to a run on the banks yet.” [Why is this official so confident that 'Spain is fine'?]

So what will happen if the unthinkable occurs and the eurozone does collapse? I’d like YOU, the well-informed Global Dashboard community, to tell me, so I can prepare in my London bunker.

Here are my rash predictions:

1) The further rise of far-right nationalist political parties and xenophobia towards immigrants. You’re already seeing this happen in Greece.

2) The Russian government exploits the power vacuum. I’m not saying Russian tanks will be rolling down the Champs Elysees anytime soon. But one of the main ‘points’ of Europe, it seemed to me, was to act as a collective bargaining bloc with Russia, and as a collective buffer against Russia’s imperialist ambitions. What happens when that buffer disintegrates? Keep an eye on the EU’s eastern border next year, particularly Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia.

Any other predictions?

Spain’s general election campaign, which concludes next Sunday, has been a pretty dull affair. The Partido Popular, led by Mariano Rajoy, has maintained but failed to widen its substantial opinion poll lead over the governing (I use the word loosely) PSOE. A televised debate between the two main candidates – Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba is the PSOE’s chosen lamb to the slaughter – produced few fireworks. And the general apathy towards politics has been accentuated by the apparent predictability of the result.

Fortunately, there have been a few moments of levity. For it turns out that Mr Rajoy, generally a grey, awkward figure whose strategy is based not on enthusing the electorate as a whole but on avoiding statements that might give PSOE supporters a reason to get off their sofas and vote, is something of a ladies’ man. While he lacks the smooth charm of a Clinton – your average cricket bat is less wooden than Mr Rajoy appeared in last week’s debate – and the filthy lucre of a Berlusconi, Spain’s Prime Minister in-waiting has developed an idiosyncratic but highly effective method of appealing to the fairer sex: the Rajoy Head-Clamp.

Mr Rajoy has learned quickly. In order to avoid embarrassing rejections like this -

- the candidate has taken matters – literally – into his own hands. When I was at school, a fellow pupil who had little success in love was often accused by scurrilous peers of grabbing girls by the head in order to obtain a kiss. Mariano Rajoy uses a similar technique. Hardly a day goes by without some new picture appearing in the newspapers showing his vicelike grip on any woman who crosses his campaign trail. Here is an early example, in which he embraces a supporter despite her attempts to push him away:

And here he is – his grip firmer this time – with one of his party’s candidates for a local election:

You can see the evolution of the technique in this shot of Mr Rajoy with another supporter. This poor woman, her neck seized, has very little prospect of escape:

Even those closest to him – Mr Rajoy claims that most of his most valued advisers are women, and has said he is “comforted” that “they” [women] are playing an increasingly important role in public life – cannot escape his clutches. Here he is about to land a smacker on Esperanza Aguirre, the President of Madrid and one of his staunchest allies. Again, the Head-Clamp is deployed to devastating effect:

You might be surprised to hear that despite his easy way with women, Mr Rajoy’s gender policies have sometimes been criticised. He seems likely to take a firm line against abortion, for example, a policy many see as a denial of women’s rights. Some women are worried that he might repeal the PSOE’s gender equality laws. Here, too, however, the Head-Clamp has come in handy, for Mr Rajoy, obviously growing in confidence as more and more women succumb to his new seduction technique, has begun to use it to win round opponents. Celia Villalobos, for instance, is a rare Partido Popular figure who is in favour of abortion (and of gay marriage too, which her party strongly opposes). When Mr Rajoy met her in Málaga last week, this champion of feminism, undaunted by her radical stance, did not shrink from trying out the Head-Clamp:

There is only one line Mr Rajoy will not cross, having evidently concluded that some audiences are not yet ready for the trusty Head-Clamp. When he shows his tolerance of other religions by kissing Muslim women, he keeps his hands firmly behind his back:

Mariano Rajoy once said that “When a Spanish woman kisses, she really kisses.” In the Head-Clamp method, which it must be said gives the Spanish woman little choice, he has found a reliable tool for testing his theory.

The G20 summit in Cannes is over.  Here’s a grumpy little post about it that I first published on the ECFR blog this morning:

There’s something a little fraudulent about big international summits.  In the run-up to each conference, politicians and pundits promise that they are going to solve the crisis of the day in a single meeting.  Sometimes they do.  Mostly they don’t.  And then they (and you) forget the whole event in a few weeks.  Test yourself.  Can you remember all fourteen or fifteen summits that have been held on the Euro crisis?  Or all the conclaves that have marked supposed turning-points in the Afghan war?  Of course you can’t.

But it’s likely that, five or ten years from now, you’ll still have a vague recollection of this week’s G20 meeting in Cannes.  Not, sadly, because the assembled leaders will have achieved anything of world-historical significance.  Instead, historians will mark this down as the moment that Europe’s weakness on the world stage was laid totally bare.

The EU’s leaders have stumbled into this summit without a credible plan to save the Eurozone.  It’s not because they didn’t try.  As I note in an article for Política Exterior that was published this week, European politicians saw the summit as an important deadline for ending the crisis:

On 9 October, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that they were working on a plan to reinforce Europe’s banks and, in doing so finally halt the financial markets’ loss of confidence in the Eurozone.  Their goal was to complete this before the Group of Twenty (G20) summit in Cannes on 3-4 November.

The Eurozone’s leaders had been under international pressure to get their act together before Cannes.  British Chancellor of the Exchequer had called the G20 meeting a “clear deadline” for the Eurogroup.  Other G20 members ranging from Canada to Indonesia had publicly expressed concerns about the Eurozone.  For Merkel and Sarkozy, the idea of heading to Cannes empty-handed must have seemed too humiliating to contemplate.

Whoops.  Despite their best efforts, Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy have been surprised and embarrassed by the Greeks’ failure to fit in with their game-plan.  The Euro crisis continues to overshadow the summit, leaving the Europeans present looking silly.

Where the Eurozone goes from here still isn’t clear.  But I’m ready to bet that, before long, some commentators will be blaming the whole debacle on the G20 itself.  Although President Sarkozy and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown were early advocates of the G20, a lot of Europeans feel uncomfortable with the forum.

As a whole, the EU’s members have less influence in the G20 than they wield in the G8.  At times, the U.S. and the non-Western emerging economies have ganged up on the Europeans in G20 debates, as they did in a dispute over reducing Europe’s political influence the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the run-up to last year’s G20 summit in Seoul.  The Europeans have also worked with China and other rising powers to criticize U.S. policy at recent summits, but they still fear they’re being marginalized.

So is the G20 bad for the EU, as I ask in my Política Exterior piece?  Not really.  Right now, it’s the EU that’s bad for the EU:

Crucially, the major obstacles to the EU performing effectively within the G20 continue to lie within the EU itself.  After the 2009 Pittsburgh G20 summit, for example, the U.S. and other powers gave the EU’s members almost a year to resolve the mechanics of IMF reform themselves.  It was only after it became clear that the Europeans could not or would do this that the Obama administration forced them into making hard choices before Seoul.

Similarly, the burst of pressure on the Eurozone to put its house in order this October followed a long period in which European countries had tried to halt the Euro crisis at their own pace.  The fact that Euro crisis came to overshadow the run-up to the Cannes tells us more about the deficiencies of decision-making in the Eurozone than in the G20, and EU leaders should not try to distract from their errors by grumbling about the G20.

When I wrote that, I still thought the EU would raise its game sufficiently to get through the Cannes summit in decent shape.  It hasn’t.  You won’t forget this moment for a while.