Bear with us

In mid-July, the Group of Eight industrialized countries, and Russia, will be meeting in St. Petersburg, in what Russian President Vladimir Putin will regard as recognition of his nation’s resurgent importance. Not surprisingly, a main agent of that importance is oil and gas, and Putin has proposed that “energy security” be an item on the agenda.Oil is one very good reason why Russia has been accorded a seat with G8 members, though its economy is smaller than Holland’s. Meanwhile, the country with the second largest economy in the world, China, has been kept at arm’s length. That’s partly because the G8 likes to see itself as a grouping of wealthy democracies, and China, with its blending of capitalism and autocracy, has provoked discomfort in the industrialized club. Oddly, though, that same distaste has little affected their attitude toward Russia, where Putin has gradually suffocated independent voices in the media, in