G8: long overdue

Failure would be welcome. It’s too bad that the leaders of western powers convening in Italy will do their utmost to pretend to avoid it. But a G8 summit that ended in an avowed flop would be a forceful incentive for participants to draw the conclusion they should have come to long ago: scrap the summits. In the thirty-odd years of the event’s history, the annual meetings have produced no serious decisions or major breakthroughs. What started in the mid-seventies as an informal, pool-side meeti...