President Obama and six other world leaders said Monday that they would not meet at the so-called Group of Eight summit in June in Sochi, Russia, and instead would convene at that time in Brussels, without Russia, to discuss the “broad agenda we have together.”

Stephen Harper called for a “complete reversal” of President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and suggested Russia should be booted out of the Group of Eight nations when he visited Ukraine. 

In our rapidly changing world, old institutions often survive but are regularly supplemented with newer, larger groups that keep pace with progress. That’s certainly the case with the G-8 and G-20 meetings, which have an important place in diplomacy but also have limitations. As the world develops, dynamic nations clamor to have their voices heard.

Portugal is more pro-multilateral, emphasizing soft power and persuasion rather than picking fights, argued Jez Littlewood, director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton University. This, he argues, is actually similar to the position Canada used to take when it sat on the council.

The teacup diplomacy pioneered by Nancy Reagan and her Soviet counterpart, Raisa Gorbachev, in the mid ’80s, and formally reinstated as the “spouse’s program” in 2004 by Laura Bush, is archaic at a time political spouses are as professionally accomplished as their mates—and increasingly male.

“Senior diplomats and other officials representing G-20 countries used the social networking platform to collaborate in the months prior to the June 26-27 event so that when the Summit got under way, issues and perspectives were shared over a secure network,” said Tom Jenkins, Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer at Open Text.

The arrest of the ten deep cover agents of Russia at the end of the G-8 and G-20 summits carries with it a significance far beyond the immediate fact of the counterintelligence action. The Obama administration had just wound up a lengthy and complicated courting of President Medvedev of Russia in conjunction with an aggressive effort along the same line as Germany.

While the World Cup has united people around TV sets across the world over the past weeks, another more radical act of global unity took place. This past weekend the world's leading governments came together and talked about women.