Last month, U.S. presidential candidates John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) returned from trips abroad to highlight their foreign policy expertise, and showing, they hope, how they would improve America’s poor image abroad. It has been three weeks since Russia entered Georgia, which is also enough time for both presidential candidates to gather their thoughts and tell America and the World their reactions to the conflict and what they would have done, say, had the entire ordeal took place in February 2009. Here is how their positions unfolded:

Reports from MSNBC on August 8 say that Obama and McCain took practically the same line in their initial reactions. Both called for Russia to immediately end its military operations and wanted the United Nations Security Council to help secure a peaceful resolution. Both expressed the need for help from others (McCain said the “European Union and OSCE,” Obama the “international community”).

Two days later, McCain sharpened his words and directed them at the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin. ABC News wrote that the Arizona Senator called him a “totalitarian dictator” and summated his assessment of Putin by describing three things he saw when he looked into his eyes: “K, G, and B.” (President Bush, in a famous eye-gazing moment several years ago, said he saw Putin’s soul and “knew he was a good man.”) In the same report, Obama said, “I think it is important at this point for all sides to show restraint and to stop this armed conflict,” showing a stark contrast in governing style. Both statements seem calibrated to appeal to American voters, the article suggests.

On August 14, the Huffington Post highlighted John McCain’s responses to the skirmish that stressed Russian aggression and the need to defend Georgia. Obama did this as well, though to a lesser extent, but with more emphasis on employing the help of America’s European partners.

Most recently, the statements have diverged sharply, such as Deutsche Welle reported on August 22. McCain, who took a bold position on Mr. Putin early on, became specific and called for the suspension of Russia from the Group of Eight highly industrialized nations, and expressed opposition to Russia’s entry in the World Trade Organization. Obama remained general, saying that we’ve entered a new area of relations with Russia, still emphasizing the need for cooperation with European countries on a new Russia policy.

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On August 8, the conflict between Russia and Georgia erupted into war over break-away enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. German Marshall Fund has been tracking the developments in the wider Black Sea region for the past few years. Experts from our Washington, DC, headquarters and European offices have contributed detailed commentary on the current discussion surrounding the Russia-Georgia conflict and Georgia’s previous democratic and economic development. Through its policy and opinion briefs, events, books, expert articles and Op-eds, and blog posts, GMF brings you the history and most recent developments of the conflict in the South Caucasus. To visit the site, click here.

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Picture a long line of dominoes, each one representing one of the globe’s special clubs, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, or the International Atomic Energy Agency, and so on. At the front of the line stands the European Union. Evidenced by the sheer amount of media coverage, the Irish “no” vote on the Lisbon treaty, the refined version of the failed European Constitution from a few years ago, means the EU is experiencing yet another existential crisis. If Lisbon doesn’t pass the second Irish test, which is tentatively set for October, the evolution of the EU grinds to a halt, and the 27-member union will teeter. If the European club, which features some of the world’s wealthiest and most democratic countries, can’t get its act together, how will the other, larger clubs fare? Are the dominoes ready to fall?

Many of these multilateral organizations do outstanding work and serve the globe with aplomb, but many also have become outmoded, irrelevant, and bureaucratic. A recent article in the Economist points out that the world economy has changed and suggests that the current set up of the G-8 must be reinvented. Circumstances have changed, and the current club doesn’t necessarily reflect the new global economic makeup. Perhaps emerging economies, such as China, India, and Brazil, need to be included, as well as an African representative, the piece suggests.

Another article, entitled “The Next World,” appeared in the Germany weekly Die Zeit last week before the G-8 summit, arguing that a new era of “flexible associations” will emerge. The author, Parag Khanna, asks how the UN, G-8, or IMF expect to set the tone for a globalized world when globalization follows another principle: decentralization. The decentralization of power from these older clubs, and especially from the United States, is perhaps what the next world will feature. Khanna traveled to a handful of so-called “second-world” countries, including Turkey, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia, and was surprised to find an extraordinary flexibility in each. For example, India buys weapons from Russia, is expanding trade with China, and just signed an agreement with the United States on the civil use of atomic energy. Kazakhstan is modernizing its pipelines with Russian help, working with the EU on having their turn at the helm of the OSCE, and proclaiming a strategic partnership with China. “No one trusts anyone else, not the least the United States,” Khanna writes.

The question to ask is whether we need to seriously reform the world’s clubs to represent a better cross-section of the global relations and economy. After all, integrating economies, as with France’s and Germany’s steel industries in 1955, was how the European Union found its feet. A few dominoes may fall in the process, but this could be a welcome impetus for rethinking the way we handle our multilateral clubs.

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