The G7 summit ended two days ago and if it wasn’t clear before, it should be now, that the post-1945/WWII era is over. The world order that most of humanity today grew up with and know nothing else, the order that has lived up to its main objective to prevent a Third World War, for the last nearly quarter of a century is dissolving. Less clear is what replaces it. World leaders are in unfamiliar territory in that they did not anticipate the institutions, and alliances that have defined the era diminishing. Nor did they anticipate the era ending in the way it’s ending.
Major news media describe the G7 summit as one ‘fraught with division’, that the parties disagree with each other. That’s accurate, but there’s only one real source of division–the United States and everyone else. Yes there might be some side disagreements over Britain’s exit from the European Union (aka Brexit), and others but the United States’ inability to come to consensus with the other G7 powers in Biarritz, France was the main storyline of the three-day summit.
The President of the United States disagreed with its closest leaders on climate change, free trade, what to do about Iran and North Korea and others, even as the host nation’s leader, President Emmanuel Macron tried his best to bring the world’s most great powers together and avoid last year’s calamity when Mr. Trump did not sign the joint communique on climate change, left the summit early, and then proceeded to attack the host nation’s prime minister on Twitter, which happened to be Canada’s Justin Trudeau.
To avoid a repeat, President Macron announced there would be no communique, the first time in the G7’s history, which meant the focus was on bilateral meetings between countries. In a sense, President Macron played right into Mr. Trump’s hands. This is what he wants. Mr. Trump ran in 2016 on blowing up the system, and that extends internationally. It’s why he loves Brexit, calls the European Union a foe and did not join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He does not like multilateralism, where aberrant American Foreign Policy is more easily exposed. He prefers bilateralism, which becomes ‘divide and conquer’ in that he can use United States’ economic and military might to pressure foreign leaders. President Macron wanted to bring countries together without a public quarrel, including Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif, in a surprise visit.
I could detail what happened at the G7 such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushing back on Mr. Trump’s tariffs, expressing hope that Mr. Trump will back down from his trade war with China before it pulls the global economy into recession; Mr. Trump saying he wants Russia invited back next year, making this a G8 summit again; Mr. Trump essentially ignoring Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s concerns about North Korea’s short-range missile tests, saying that these test do not violate any agreement; or Mr. Trump saying he wants next year’s summit, when the United States is the host, to be at one of his resorts in Florida, a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause in the United States constitution.
The purpose of the G7 summit, also known as the Group of Seven, is to allow the world’s wealthiest and most advanced countries to discuss the most pressing international issues. The joint communique symbolizes global consensus on addressing these problems. There’s legitimate criticism of the G7, in that China’s absence as the world’s second largest economy, along with other emerging powers, weakens its legitimacy, or that concrete action hardly if ever comes from this yearly summit. Those are perfectly valid criticisms. However the fact that world leaders have to handle Mr. Trump “with kid gloves” is an ominous sign of things to come, considering that the entire global system is itself a creation of the United States. Until Mr. Trump, American presidents rallied the rest of the world to hold this system up. Now the current American president is one of the biggest threats to it. Meanwhile the rest of the world tries to move on, deal with their national problems, without agitating the leader of the world’s largest economy and most powerful military.
It’s a fragile and precarious balance to strike. But it’s where we are at in the 21st century. And the question is, will other countries lose patience with the United States, and allow their disagreements to cause a real falling out?
Being American 