The West's view is that flawed democracy is better than no democracy. Asian and African developing countries, with the notable exception of India, are still grappling with the question of democracy. Reforming, economic and political, was never going to be easy and there is a growing body of public opinion and Western decision-makers who are determined to make things fairer. All the big powers have their troubles, but none more so than Russia. And cutting Russia down to size was done very discretely.
All big powers have their squabbles, too.
Nationalism did not die with the spread of globalisation. Indeed, national, religious, ethnic and tribal conflicts are on the rise. To an extent there has been a conspiracy of silence about the implications of empty talk shops. Empty talk shops today provide political expression for that body of opinion defined as liberal, and which includes economic liberalisation. The G8 meetings appear to many to be one such pointless empty talk shop.