Merkel's Plan for Saving the G8 Summit

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The meeting's participants agreed that German voters, from Rügen on the Baltic Sea to Passau in the foothills of the Alps, are the target audience for what Steg called "multi-level communication." "It is important," the document states, that "the national perspective of the G-8 be seen as being in the foreground" -- a position which stands in stark contrast to the internationalist declarations Merkel has been issuing in public.

The group itself could hardly have been surprised when Bush publicly took a position last Thursday that directly contradicts Merkel's. The US president, who, in his conversations with the chancellor, criticized her several times for her stubbornness and, in particular, found fault with the decisions reached at the European Union climate summit, is trying to portray himself as the great realist. Fighting climate change is all well and good, says Bush, but not at the cost of growth and prosperity.

The US president announced his own climate protection initiative (more...) just a few days before the G-8 summit was set to begin. Part of his plan is to launch a series of meetings with the major industrialized nations and the countries with the strongest economic growth. Bush made it clear that the United States would expect to assume the leadership in this process, a role the Chancellery had in fact already claimed for Merkel.

Anxious as the powerful are to avoid giving this impression, a showdown seems inevitable in Heiligendamm. The smiling photo ops in beautiful, natural surroundings will likely stand in sharp contrast to what happens behind the scenes: America against Germany, a climate change deadbeat against a courageous contender for a better world -- he against she.

Part 2: Stealing the Limelight

Last week Bush ignited a downright blitz of ideas, the goal being to steal the show from Merkel. On Wednesday, to the Germans' surprise, he asked the US Congress to double its support for AIDS programs to $30 billion over the next five years (more...). The funds, intended primarily for Africa, made the €750 million ($1.01 billion) increase in Merkel's AIDS budget seem puny by comparison.

On the same day, his administration announced that when Russian President Putin visits the United States in early July, he will travel to Bush's parents' summer home in Kennebunkport for one-on-one talks. Diplomats in Berlin believe that Kosovo will likely be the main issue on the Bush-Putin agenda, essentially eliminating the prospects of a serious discussion of the troubled province in Heiligendamm.

Then Bush's biggest coup arrived the next evening, when he announced his government's initiative to reduce levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, Merkel has no intention to be robbed of the opportunity to shine before the local and global public in Heiligendamm as an energetic champion of a better world.

The summit is a favorable opportunity for Merkel to make a good impression. Every eight years a German chancellor has the chance to greet a group of heads of state who may only represent 13 percent of the world's population but are responsible for about 60 percent of its gross domestic product. A head of state has to be in office for a long time -- or simply be lucky -- to chair the G-8 summit as head of state.

A Summit of Superlatives

It is already clear that this meeting will be a summit of superlatives. In addition to the lively disputes deep in the interior of the conference hotel, the action outside will be equally exciting.

Heiligendamm will see the biggest contingent of police ever assembled in Germany. Sixteen thousand police officers from all across Germany will protect more than 2,000 delegation attendees and more than 4,000 journalists who will arrive at this small Baltic Sea resort town between Wednesday and Friday. Meanwhile German and American warships will patrol the coastline.

A 12-kilometer-long metal fence has been constructed around the summit location -- the longest protective barrier built in Germany since the construction of the Berlin Wall. The security precautions also include a 3.5-kilometer steel net in the waters off Heiligendamm, which is meant to protect against possible attacks from the sea. In the end, the summit will have cost €100 million ($134.8 million) -- also a record.

In the middle of last week, a few newspapers began counting down the days until the summit begins ("Six more days until the summit meeting in Heiligendamm" wrote one paper) -- as if Germans could hardly wait for the summit to begin. This reflects how high expectations apparently are.

There is a lot at stake for the chancellor: her reputation as G-8 chair as well as Germany's image in the world, but also Merkel's image as a politician who gets things done. Merkel has promised that the summit will not be about empty words, but will instead examine solutions for the world's biggest challenges.

The summit will address aid for Africa, more money for the fight against AIDS, protection of intellectual property, more transparent financial markets and, of course, climate change, Merkel's new hobbyhorse.

After the chancellor announced at the last EU summit in Brussels a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, she now wants to see a world-wide commitment made: Global temperatures should not increase by any more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050. According to scientists, this ambitious goal will only be met if CO2 emissions are halved in the next few decades.

Merkel's way of thinking is different from Bush's, and is very German. She wants the summit to succeed in weakening two preconceptions: her supposed thralldom to the United States is a thorn in her side, as is the supposed lack of environmental commitment on the part of Germany's conservatives. In election campaigns, both have proven problematic, since the Germans clearly love the environment and currently have a deep mistrust of the Americans.

Bush doesn't think much of Merkel's proposed concrete emissions caps. At present, the US is skeptical of any move that would commit industrial nations to binding climate goals.

Recently, the Americans returned a draft version of the final summit document on global warming, which had been prepared by the Germans, with multiple deletions and comments. On one page it said: "The US still has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement." Another sentence read: "The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses 'multiple red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to."

Even before this, tensions between to the two countries over the climate were already running high. A few weeks earlier, at a meeting of G-8 environmental ministers in Potsdam, Germany's Environment Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, asked his American guests if they would consider financially supporting rainforest protection projects. His American counterpart answered coolly: "I'm not the treasury secretary."