Summits and Secrecy
It’s important to pay attention to what takes place at these significant events, even if it’s boring and especially when it’s concealed from the public eye.
Last weekend several high-profile groups convened at various summits around the world where powerful people of all kinds gathered together to discuss and shape global policy. Those groups include the Group of Seven, the Arab League, and the notorious Bilderberg Group. Each summit was consequential in its own way, but unless you’re constantly plugged into the political discourse, they were all easy to overlook.
The inner workings of the power structures that control the world are often shrouded in secrecy, but they’re also often enveloped in dry and boring political jargon that makes the average person’s eyes gloss over. This serves to keep the general public willfully ignorant, or simply unaware, of what goes on at these summits where some of the world’s most influential people decide how to operate the systems we all have to live under.
I want to briefly touch on the history of each of these groups and go over some of the highlights of these recent summits. In the process, I’ll hopefully be able to showcase why it’s important to pay attention to what takes place at these significant events, even if it’s boring and especially when it’s concealed from the public eye.
G7
The Group of Seven (G7) is one of the more mundane gatherings of Western empire managers, as most people have probably heard of the group but don’t seem to pay much attention to it. According to Reuters, the G7 “is an informal grouping of wealthy Western nations,” that was “founded following the 1973 OPEC oil embargo as a forum for the richest nations to discuss global economic issues.” The group includes the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. The body became the G8 when Russia joined in 1997, but following its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine back in 2014, Russia was once again excluded from the group.
This year’s G7 summit took place from May 19-21 in Hiroshima, Japan, the first city to ever be bombed with a nuclear weapon. According to that same Reuters article, holding the summit in Hiroshima was a “symbolic choice” by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that “highlights his desire to put nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation at the top of this year's agenda.” That may be true on Kishida’s part, but the substance of what was actually discussed at the summit tells a different story. In fact, a joint statement put out by the G7 on nuclear disarmament was criticized by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for falling “far short of providing any meaningful outcomes for nuclear disarmament” and failing “to meaningfully acknowledge the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons”.
The G7’s joint statement doesn’t put any real emphasis on the fact that the US is the only government to use a nuclear weapon against another country, but it repeatedly criticizes Russia for its “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric”. It also fails to acknowledge the role that G7 member states have played in prolonging the conflict in Ukraine and the US’s role in undermining arms control treaties between the US and Russia.
The statement also says that “North Korea cannot and will never have the status of a nuclear-weapon State under the NPT [the Non-Proliferation Treaty]” and calls for continued sanctions on North Korea without mentioning the ways the US is currently provoking the country. It also states that “Iran must never develop a nuclear weapon” but it doesn’t emphasize the US’s withdrawal from and failure to re-enter the Iran Nuclear Deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — and it never once mentions Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program.
During the summit, which included a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the leaders of the G7 countries reaffirmed their commitments to support Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion by tightening sanctions on Russia. At the summit, President Joe Biden also confirmed that the US will allow its European allies to ship F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine and it will aid in the training of Ukrainian pilots, which is a major escalation of the US’s involvement in the war.
In response to the US signing off on shipments of F-16s to Ukraine, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said the move “involves colossal risks” but it’s unlikely that the West will take that warning seriously despite the G7’s claimed concerns of the dangers of nuclear weapons.
Another focus of the G7 summit was countering China’s supposed “economic coercion”, but as the BBC notes, “It's a tricky balancing act for the G7.” That’s because “their economies have become inextricably dependent on China, but competition with Beijing has increased”. The US has also put pressure on its European allies to cooperate in its escalations against China, but not every world leader within the G7 shares the US’s view of the situation. The most notable example is French President Emmanuel Macron, who, after a trip to China back in April, said in an interview that Europe should maintain “strategic autonomy” and not become a “vassal” for the US in its crusade against Beijing.
Macron’s statements provided a shred of hope that tensions between the West and China might decrease, but the G7’s stance suggests the desire to “counter” China is still the dominant attitude in the majority of Western governments. As Dave Decamp recently wrote for Antiwar.com, the remarks coming out of the G7 summit “came as the US is preparing to provide Taiwan with $500 million in ‘free’ weapons, and after the US deployed about 200 troops to the island, steps the Chinese military called ‘intolerable.’”
Arab League
According to World Atlas, the Arab League “is a voluntary association of countries that use Arabic as the official language or whose members are mainly of Arab origin” and it “was established in 1945 in Egypt with six countries as the founding members. These were Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.” The group has since grown to a total of 22 countries, including Palestine. According to NPR:
Although several of its members over the years have normalized relations with Israel, the Arab League continues to uphold the Palestinian cause as one of its most important missions. Palestinians have full membership in the bloc, despite not having an independent state.
This year’s summit, which was held on Friday, May 19, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was significant due to Syria’s return to the bloc after over a decade of being suspended from it. It was reported that Saudi Arabia would invite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back in April of this year, much to the chagrin of the US government. Syria’s return marks a notable shift in diplomacy between Syria and some of its regional neighbors, as many of the Arab League’s member states, including Saudi Arabia, supported the US-led dirty war in Syria in which the US backed an insurgency in an attempt to overthrow Assad. Much of the international community has finally begun to recognize that the Syrian government won that war and has started the process of repairing relations with the country.
Syria rejoining the Arab League and moving toward normalization with Saudi Arabia is one of the latest examples of the US losing influence in the region, with a couple of other notable examples being Saudi Arabia considering pricing its oil in currencies other than the US dollar and Saudi Arabia and Iran coming to an unprecedented — and Chinese brokered — agreement back in March. As Ted Snider wrote for Antiwar.com, that latter development upset the US for a couple of reasons:
The first is that it was China that emerged as the effective power in the region and brokered the agreement and reshaped the region. The second is that US foreign policy does not favor peace and stability in the region.
While Chinese foreign policy demands the fostering of stability in the region, US foreign policy demands a schism and hostility. A major feature of US foreign policy in the region is the establishment and maintenance of a coalition against Iran. At the heart of that coalition is Saudi Arabia firmly in the US anti-Iran camp. The Chinese brokered Saudi-Iran agreement dissolves that coalition and heals the schism. The US, and not China, is revealed as the power promoting rivalry and hostility over stability.
The US losing influence in the Middle East is, in my opinion, a positive development. I could give countless examples of US foreign policy destabilizing the region going back decades, but the most relevant case would be Syria itself. Despite the US-backed regime-change operation failing miserably, the US still maintains a presence in the country against the wishes of the Syrian government. The US appears to be behaving like a sore loser that refuses to admit defeat; through a combination of US military personnel and the forces we back within the country, the US is currently occupying roughly one-third of Syria. Which third? The one that just so happens to be rich in resources like wheat and oil.
The US also continues to conduct raids and drone strikes in Syria, the most recent of which happened just this month. US Central Command (CENTCOM) originally claimed the strike killed a senior al-Qaeda member, but it has since been reported that the strike actually killed a local sheep herder who was a father to ten children and had no apparent ties to terrorist groups. The US also maintains crippling sanctions on Syria, which is a form of economic warfare that harms the civilian population of Syria far more than it will ever harm the government the US wants to replace.
If the shift in relations between countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria means a more stable and peaceful Middle East and that the US will be pressured to end its sanctions campaign and military interventions in Syria, then I fail to see any downside to that development.
Bilderberg Group
According to the Bilderberg Group’s official press release for this year’s summit, the Bilderberg Meeting, which was founded in 1954, is “an annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America.” This year’s meeting, which took place in Lisbon, Portugal, from May 18-21, consisted of roughly “130 participants from 23 countries” and those participants were “a diverse group of political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia, labour and the media”.
Much like the infamous World Economic Forum (WEF), the Bilderberg Group has gained notoriety among those who are suspicious of global elites and their intentions. Unlike the WEF, however, the Bilderberg Meeting takes place behind closed doors, and the media is not permitted to attend (except for those within the media who attend as guests and not as reporters). Such secrecy paves the way for speculation and conspiracy theories to form about what really goes on at the event.
The World Economic Forum 2023
As always, many of those conspiracy theories are likely baseless, but are we really expected to believe that a secret meeting of some of the world’s most powerful people doesn’t involve them conspiring to advance their desired agendas and to amass more wealth and power for themselves? In my opinion, such an idea is itself a baseless conspiracy theory.
As Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone recently put it: “The Bilderberg Group comprises a who’s-who of the trans-Atlantic elite who are dedicated to extending the Ukraine proxy war,” and “possibly going to war with China,” which means the Bilderberg Group is basically a less transparent version of other groups like the WEF and the G7. A full list of attendees was posted on the group’s website, but some notable examples are:
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI
Anne Applebaum, a neocon staff writer at The Atlantic
Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer
Børge Brende, the President of the World Economic Forum
Jen Easterly, the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence
Henry Kissinger, former US diplomat and cabinet member of the Ford and Nixon administrations
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs
Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft
Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO
Peter Thiel, the President of Thiel Capital
John Waldron, the President and COO of Goldman Sachs
Considering that more public-facing groups with similar objectives exist, and that those groups are made up of some of the same influential figures who attend the Bilderberg Meeting, the completely rational and understandable question of why these global elites would need a separate, more secret forum emerges, and even if some people take their speculation too far, that question is still worth asking. Personally, it seems obvious that one reason could be because the elites who make up the Bilderberg Group need that secrecy in order to — dare I say it? — conspire together to advance agendas the general public might disagree with or find disconcerting.
The key topics of discussion at this year's meeting included geopolitical issues such as US leadership, Russia and Ukraine, NATO, China, and India; financial issues like the banking system and “fiscal challenges”; and technological issues like artificial intelligence (AI) and “energy transition”. With such topics on the agenda, it makes sense to bring in people with backgrounds in each of those sectors, but what doesn’t make sense is keeping the meeting hidden from the public. What is it that is said during this meeting that is too dangerous for the public to hear?
Many people, if not most people, seem to be indifferent to events like the Bilderberg Meeting, and I presume it’s largely because those who do pay attention to it are branded as unhinged “conspiracy theorists”. That’s an intentionally unfair characterization, however, because, due to the secretive nature of the group, the average person has no other choice than to speculate about what goes on at the summit.
If the elites who attend the Bilderberg Meeting don’t want to be accused of conspiring to control the world, they could simply open the meeting up to the media and let their discussions face public scrutiny. The group’s unwillingness to do so only lends credence to the accusations against them, regardless of how baseless they may or may not be. Of course, the elites who attend the meeting should be entitled to privacy, as should all of us, but when someone’s status gives them the ability to shape the world the rest of us have to live in, it’s only natural for us to want to know how that person uses their power and influence, especially when it’s in collusion with many other powerful and influential people.
Conclusion
These three summits that I covered in this article are just some of the latest instances of powerful people gathering together to decide how to run our world. While many people might feel as though it’s unimportant or unnecessary to pay attention to events such as these, I feel the opposite. The people who make up these groups wield massive amounts of authority, and I think it’s naive to assume that they’re well-intentioned.
It’s very plausible that the global elites within these groups plan on consolidating control over us and expanding their power as much as possible, and if that’s the case they would need us to remain indifferent and ignorant to these events in order for that to happen. Otherwise, we, the people who have the ability to oust these elites from their powerful positions, might decide we don’t agree with their agendas and push back against them.
In any case, it’s crucial to hold the powerful to account, and in order to do that, we have to remain vigilant and be aware of what they’ve done, what they’re doing currently, and what they plan to do in the future. If doing so requires parsing through boring political jargon, wild speculation, and mountains of secrecy, then so be it.
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