Indecisiveness in Cannes

One of the little-mentioned reasons for the anger among world leaders in Cannes is that their innate indecisiveness has been exposed.

Whether they are global summits or EU summits, the practise for many years has been that heads of state come together at great expense and with much pomp to rubberstamp policy which has been determined by bureaucrats weeks before, all with an eye to media acceptability. Often the policies are purely presentational and pledges made for famine aid, for example, or environmental measures, are never carried beyond the conventional press conferences.

So it was with this week’s meeting in Cannes, when all the key world leaders were to come together to network, announce, no doubt, some trade agreements and to confirm the EU bail-out deal of last week. It was to have been a time of self-congratulation for an economic crisis being dealt with successfully. Instead one quiet man from Greece has thrown a grenade into the carefully rehearsed plans, blowing open the prepared package of unity and agreement.

And the world leaders do not know what to do. The people who guard our security and ensure our welfare have been taken by surprise: they are paid a lot of money and entrusted with the power to deal with the unexpected, but their indecisiveness is apparent. They are being asked to deal with something other than the predictable, and it is uncomfortable them. So, there is much annoyance that a politician whose acquiescence and gratitude they had taken for granted has made their personal and political life difficult. There is even more annoyance that, even temporarily, the balance of power has changed hands.

This week, in Cannes, the heads of state, particularly in France, Germany and the US, will have no option but to have discussions based on reality and a developing situation, reacting and planning rather than agreeing already confirmed anaemic statements. It is the test of a leader as to how he or she behaves in a crisis: indecisiveness and anger are the qualities visible as I write, and also fear as they confront the unknown. Greece, in the eye of the storm, stands battered but ready for the challenges ahead. Other nations, clearly, are not.