Word: summiteer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Venice summit promptly made clear, Reagan's efforts to exert his leadership are severely handicapped. Europeans readily acknowledge that in arms negotiations American military power far overshadows that of any other ! ally: indeed, U.S. defense spending ($289 billion last year) is more than half the size of Britain's entire gross domestic product ($547 billion in 1986). But in economic matters, the crippling U.S. budget and trade deficits cause America to appear as a supplicant rather than a confident leader. The $170 billion shortfall in trade last year made the U.S. the world's largest debtor nation. A Western diplomat...
...Reagan since the Iran-contra scandal broke, and they were distressed by what they saw. The 76-year-old President appeared visibly older and slower, physically and mentally. He dismayed several heads of government by reading from index cards during informal gatherings, something he had not done at previous summits. Compared with his performance at the Tokyo summit last year, said a French diplomat, the President "seemed much less at ease, much more hesitant...
...sure, Reagan was not the only weakened leader in Venice. Wits went too far in talking about a "lame-duck summit." West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was re-elected in January, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was on the verge of winning a third term, and French President Francois Mitterrand has recouped his popularity. But Prime Ministers Amintore Fanfani of Italy and Yasuhiro Nakasone of Japan are due to step down soon, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is in severe political trouble at home. No wonder that their deliberations in a 17th century monastery on the island...
Reagan professed to consider the summit a success, but he had little to back up his claim. On the subject of the Persian Gulf, for example, the seven issued a general statement championing "freedom of navigation." There was not a word of specific support for the U.S. plan to register Kuwaiti tankers under the American flag and have U.S. warships escort them through the gulf. The Americans made much afterward of the warships that Britain and France for some time have maintained in the gulf, but the U.S. got nothing new from its allies. In a joint statement...
...economics, the ostensible subject of the summit, Treasury Secretary James Baker remarked, "I can't think of any major item . . . that we came here wanting that we did not get." True, but only because the U.S. knew better than to press the other six for any strong action. Washington had hoped that Japan and West Germany would move to stimulate their domestic economies to ward off a growing threat of world recession and, not incidentally, reduce their towering trade surpluses, which are the counterpart of the U.S. deficit. Japan did announce a stimulative package before the summit, but Britain...