On communiqués, containers, and what gets fixed when the motorcade leaves (G7summit)
Leaders met, posed, and promised. The language was polished to the micrometer—concern, resolve, frameworks. The photos were careful. The venue was chosen to carry more weight than any paragraph can hold. Summits do symbolism well. The trouble is leaks don’t read press releases.
Sanctions in a sentence are not sanctions in a warehouse. Spare parts move through middlemen who know the price of patience. Shipping routes learn new tricks while spokespeople rehearse old ones. A pledge to “reduce dependence” is a spreadsheet that asks small factories to retool without a cushion and ports to find workers who don’t exist on paper. The bill lands far from the podium—on buyers, on clerks, on households that never asked to become collateral in a policy seminar.
I like rules. I don’t like pretending a weekend can write them into being. If you want teeth, fund inspection and enforcement. Pay for the extra eyes at customs. Build the database that tells a front company it’s not welcome and proves it in court. If you want resilience, subsidize the boring part: inventory, spares, training, the second supplier you wish you didn’t need.
Motorcades leave. Leaks stay. Measure the summit by what moves in three months: parts seized, routes rerouted, people paid to make the fix real. Everything else is staged lighting on a cracked pipe.