The Summit Industrial Complex: When Global Gatherings Freeze Power Without Changing Reality
In a hotel ballroom in Riyadh this month, diplomats and business leaders applauded as the Global Summit on Industry opened with promises of "unprecedented cooperation" on climate, trade, and development. Three kilometers away, Saudi security forces maintained a perimeter ensuring no unauthorized voices could disrupt the carefully choreographed proceedings. The leverage that brought these global decision-makers to Saudi Arabia wasn't their stated commitment to industrial innovation, but the Kingdom's strategic position as an energy producer and its growing investment portfolio across Western capitals. This pattern repeats across the international summit landscape, where the official communiqués rarely mention the actual power dynamics that shape outcomes.
The proliferation of international summits in 2025 has reached unprecedented levels. The 2025 Adopt AI International Summit hosted by Aramco brought together tech executives and government officials to discuss artificial intelligence governance. The Global Summit on Industry convened in Riyadh under UN auspices, while the Aerospace Thermoplastics International Summit was hosted by FIDAMC in Madrid, Spain, according to CompositesWorld. Each gathering follows a predictable formula: grand declarations, non-binding commitments, and carefully staged photo opportunities. What's missing from these events isn't enthusiasm or rhetoric—it's enforcement mechanisms and accountability structures that would transform promises into action.
The Accountability Vacuum
The structural weakness of international summitry becomes clearer when examining how even domestic accountability measures fail. Consider the STOCK Act, designed to prevent congressional insider trading. The penalty for violations stands at just $200, and no member of Congress has ever been prosecuted for insider trading under this legislation. This toothless enforcement persisted even after Chairwoman Maxine Waters of the House Committee on Financial Services launched an investigation that included more than 50 interviews with representatives over 16 months and three full committee hearings. The incentives simply don't align with the stated purpose of the legislation. When domestic accountability measures fail this dramatically, what hope exists for international commitments made at summits with no binding enforcement mechanisms?
The official position obscures a fundamental reality: international summits freeze existing power relationships rather than transform them. They capture a moment when various actors find it convenient to be photographed together, not when they've genuinely committed to sacrificing their interests for collective benefit. The procedural details—who funds implementation, who monitors compliance, who faces consequences for violations—are typically absent from the glossy press releases. These omissions aren't accidental; they reflect the gap between the symbolic value of summits and their practical impact.
The Cheney Doctrine: Power Behind Closed Doors
The dynamics of international summitry echo a pattern established in American politics during the early 2000s. Dick Cheney was widely considered the most powerful vice president in modern American history during his tenure under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. His influence wasn't exercised through public summits or declarations, but through closed-door meetings where actual decisions about military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were shaped. Cheney advocated for these interventions as part of the US response to 9/11, demonstrating how consequential policy is often formed away from the spotlight of international gatherings.
The Cheney model—where power operates most effectively when least visible—continues to influence international relations today. His daughter Liz Cheney became a prominent Republican congresswoman, carrying forward a political legacy built on understanding that formal processes often mask rather than reveal where power truly resides. The leverage shifted when decision-makers recognized that summits serve primarily as legitimizing venues for decisions already made in less public forums.
The Symbolic Economy of Summits
International summits generate their own economy of symbols, where the currency is visibility rather than substantive change. For host countries like Saudi Arabia, summits provide legitimacy and normalize their position in the international order regardless of human rights concerns. For corporate sponsors like Aramco hosting the Adopt AI International Summit, these events offer reputation laundering and access to regulators in a controlled environment. For politicians, they create opportunities for appearing statesmanlike without making difficult domestic tradeoffs. The question isn't whether these summits occur, but who decides their agendas and benefits from their outcomes.
Follow the incentives and a clearer picture emerges. Host countries invest millions in summit infrastructure and security not because they expect transformative policy outcomes, but because they gain diplomatic capital and domestic prestige. Corporate sponsors don't measure return on investment in policy change but in relationship-building with regulators and brand association with global problem-solving. The procedural details of who pays for implementation, who monitors compliance, and who faces consequences for violations are typically absent from the glossy press releases—not by accident, but by design.
The Local Impact of Global Theater
The disconnect between summit rhetoric and tangible outcomes becomes most apparent at the local level, where promised resources often fail to materialize. When the Aerospace Thermoplastics International Summit concluded in Madrid with commitments to sustainable aviation materials, the actual funding mechanisms, technology transfer agreements, and implementation timelines remained undefined. The Spanish workers whose livelihoods depend on aerospace manufacturing received symbolic recognition but no guaranteed pathway to participate in the industry's transformation.
This pattern repeats across sectors. The Global Summit on Industry in Riyadh produced declarations about industrial development that will theoretically benefit workers across multiple continents. Yet the power to implement these declarations remains with the same corporate and government actors who have previously prioritized shareholder value and political stability over equitable development. The leverage hasn't fundamentally shifted; only the rhetoric has changed.
Beyond the Summit Spectacle
The most consequential global governance often happens outside the spotlight of international summits. When Dick Cheney helped shape American foreign policy after 9/11, the decisions weren't announced at global gatherings but implemented through existing institutional channels. Similarly, today's most impactful international coordination often occurs through technical working groups, regulatory harmonization efforts, and bilateral negotiations that generate little media attention but produce binding commitments.
The official position obscures this reality: meaningful international cooperation depends less on symbolic gatherings than on aligned incentives and enforcement mechanisms. When the penalty for violating the STOCK Act stands at just $200 with zero prosecutions despite extensive investigations, we see how even domestic accountability measures can be rendered symbolic rather than substantive. The international arena, with its weaker enforcement mechanisms, faces even greater challenges in translating summit declarations into measurable outcomes.
Three things happened at this year's Global Summit on Industry that weren't in the communiqué: key implementation funding remained unallocated, monitoring mechanisms weren't established, and no consequences for non-compliance were defined. These omissions reveal more about the summit's actual purpose—reinforcing existing power relationships rather than transforming them—than the carefully crafted official statements ever could.
The question isn't whether international cooperation matters, but who decides its terms and who benefits from its structure. As summit season continues with the Adopt AI International Summit hosted by Aramco and specialized gatherings like the Aerospace Thermoplastics International Summit in Madrid, we might better measure their impact not by the ambition of their declarations but by the specificity of their accountability mechanisms. Until then, the gap between summit rhetoric and tangible outcomes will remain a defining feature of international relations—one that benefits those already holding power while offering primarily symbolic gains to everyone else.