Why no dishdashas in Japan?

There was one thing missing from the G8 this year – a dishdasha. Looking at the staged group photographs of the leaders of the world's "advanced" nations, the array of men in suits – Angela Merkl of Germany is such a conservative dresser she could be regarded as "one of the boys" on this occasion – looked very pleased with themselves, even smug, about the progress they had made in Japan.

At a ensemble of the G5 – leaders from India, China, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil – there was a touch more ethnic diversity, but the overall impression was of men adhering to the western model of power-dressing: two-piece outfits that could have come straight from London's Savile Row or New York's Brooks Brothers. They all looked happy just to have been invited to the rich man's club that is G8.

My point about the missing dishdasha is not simply a call for more sartorial variety at these supposedly "globalised" events, though we all need a break from the dark evening suit. There is a far more serious issue at stake here than the latest styles in power-dressing. By not including representatives from the Middle East – in dishdashas or not – the rest of the world is failing to recognise the new political and economic realities of what one leading analyst recently called the "geofinancial" crisis of capitalism.

G8 – made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States – looks more than ever like a gathering of the world's former colonisers, telling the rest of us what to do about the economic ills we are facing; the new G5 grouping were, to all intents and purposes, their former imperial subjects, apparently happy to learn at the feet of the "advanced" world. The embarrassing fact that it is those "advanced" countries that have been responsible for the severe problems we face today was not much mentioned. (Incidentally, by what right does Italy advise the rest of the world on political, economic or financial efficiency?)

The absence of Middle East and Arab leaders from the G8 formalities is a serious shortcoming if we are to have any hope of confronting those problems. Apart from the issue of Zimbabwe (on its own, I believe, a sideshow but actually a metaphor for the crippling problems faced by most sub-Saharan nations in Africa) there were three main areas for discussion in Hokkaido, and on each the new economic and financial power of the Middle East and Arab World has a crucial role to play.

On the increasingly ominous messages coming from Western financial markets, the billions of petro-dollars in the hands of the Gulf states could make all the difference between boom and bust in New York or London. Sovereigh wealth have already ridden to the rescue of banks and other financial institutions in America and Europe, and with the recessionary pressures getting stronger every day, I do not think it will be long before we hear of another life-saving injection of capital from the Gulf into the West.

Why was there nobody at Hokkaido from the Middle East to hammer home the often-stated message that the Gulf is ready and willing to play its part here, but cannot just be treated like a pool of ready cash by the rest of the world? The two other main items on the agenda – energy prices and climate change – are of course inter-related. The G8 leaders made all the right noises – condemning "speculators" and committing their countries to a programme of measures that would cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. But there are serious doubts that these ambitious, though vague, targets can be achieved without the co-operation of energy producers in the Middle East.

Gulf nations are not only the leading energy producers in the world, and therefore of crucial importance in the global economic equation that has seen energy costs soar in the West and the still fast-growing economies of the East. They have also put themselves at the forefront of new, environment-friendly technologies and processes that will require billions of dollars of investment if they are to reduce the world's dependence on carbon-producing oil and gas.

The Middle East countries have their own organisations, not the least of which is Opec, to ponder these issues and determine policies. And the Saudi government just recently held a conference in Jeddah for oil producers and consumers to try to tackle the energy problem. But without some formalised representation from the Middle East at future G8 meetings will make them little more than pointless talking shops.

What is the point of a "club for rich nations" if the seriously wealthy states of the Arab World are denied membership?

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