The G7 Summit Was Really about One Man

M ark Carney tried awfully hard to Trump-proof the G7 summit. Gone were the mentions of climate change, in were discussions of migration and energy. When the president began rambling about the need to bring Vladimir Putin back into the G7 fold, Carney hurried out the assembled media and pushed the conversation to trade. He opted against having a single joint communiqué, the kind Trump balked at, at the summit in Quebec seven years prior, instead opting for a series of issue-specific statements that Trump could get behind. The whole gang of world leaders tiptoed around the mercurial American, heaping praise on him where they could and only obliquely chiding him, never by name, where warranted. When Trump opened his binder to reveal his beautiful trade deal with the United Kingdom, spilling pages onto the ground, Prime Minister Keir Starmer scrambled to his knees to pick them up. When Trump first walked into the room to meet Carney, the Canadian made sure to wish him a belated happy birthday and insist that there could be no G7 without America. When questions swirled around Trump’s planned exit and the possibility of American air strikes on Iran, French president Emmanuel Macron leaped to praise Trump’s diplomatic acumen. “There was an offer made for a meeting” between Trump and the Iranian government, Macron said in a scrum with reporters. “If the United States can obtain a ceasefire, it is a very good thing,” he added. Trump’s team had spent all day insisting that he would sign no joint statement. At dinner, however, Carney impressed on him the importance of having a unified voice to reduce the likelihood of war in the Middle East. They hammered out a compromise: the statement would call for a ceasefire in Gaza but “de-escalation” in Iran, while also affirming “that Israel has a right to defend itself” and voicing their support for the “security of Israel.” Trump, thanks to Carney, signed. It was all an admirable effort to keep the international order working. It was putting into practice what the stalwarts of the world order—from the consummate globalist Macron to the right-wing Euroskeptic Italian populist Georgia Meloni—had learned about dealing with Trump over their years in office. And they almost got away with it too.

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A s he headed for the exit, Trump took to Truth Social to make fools of all the people who tried to accommodate him. June 16, 11:15 p.m. MST: Publicity seeking President Emmanuel Macron, of France, mistakenly said that I left the G7 Summit, in Canada, to go back to D.C. to work on a “cease fire” between Israel and Iran. Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that. Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. Stay Tuned! June 17, 3:20 a.m. MST: I have not reached out to Iran for “Peace Talks” in any way, shape, or form. This is just more HIGHLY FABRICATED, FAKE NEWS! If they want to talk, they know how to reach me. They should have taken the deal that was on the table – Would have saved a lot of lives!!! June 17, 10:19 a.m. MST: We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter! Over the course of the days that followed, Trump told his fellow G7 leaders that he was planning on direct talks with Iran, only to turn around and insist that he had no such plans. He intoned that he would be launching military action against Iran, only to have the Pentagon roundly deny it, only for the White House to reverse course once more and indicate strikes were back on the table. All the while, the constituent camps in the “Make America Great Again” movement have fought a subdermal civil war. On one side were influencers like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who argued that involvement in the Iran conflict would constitute an intolerable violation of Trump’s promise to stay out of foreign wars. On the pro-war side were the Wall Street Journal, Tom Cotton, and, perhaps most importantly, Israel. The push–pull was, perhaps accidentally, illustrated by Vice President J. D. Vance, who tried to split the baby in half—attempting to portray himself as the anti-war isolationist he played on TV whilst also managing his blind support of Trump, who is clearly considering a bombing campaign. Like with all schisms in Trump’s movement, the internal clashes are making him erratic and unpredictable. That it all spilled out during the G7 only highlighted the absurdity. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the summit on Tuesday, Macron was incredulous that the White House was still seriously considering air strikes. “Does anyone think that what we did in Iraq in 2003 was a good idea?” Macron asked rhetorically. “Does anyone think what we did in Libya, the previous decade, was a good idea? No.” He put a fine point on it: “I think the biggest mistake, right now, would be to seek regime change through military action.” He hit on the principles that the liberal order has come around to—too late, perhaps, to stop America’s ill-fated 2003 invasion, but which they have roundly endorsed now. “No to military strikes that hit energy infrastructure. No to strikes that hit civilian populations. No to strikes designed to provoke regime change.” What’s needed, he said, are negotiations. The kind of negotiations that Europe led for years—and which were on track to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, before they were scuttled by Trump. It’s not too late, Macron said; the president can make sure those talks happen again. “Trump announced to us, and said to the whole world, that he wanted to talk. I think that’s a good thing,” he said. I’m told that Trump boasted to his fellow leaders that he was heading back to Washington explicitly to start conversations with Tehran about ending the conflict. But, of course, Trump now insists he doesn’t want to talk at all. Aboard Air Force One, he said that he was heading back to DC so he could manage America’s response from the Situation Room. At the same time, an enormous amount of US Air Force assets were en route to the Middle East. M acron raised the possibility that this whole exercise from Trump was an effort to insert some unpredictability, some intentional ambiguity, in order to apply pressure on Iran. But, Macron went on, this sudden change of heart basically roiled the consensus that they had all come to just hours earlier. “A ceasefire? It’s President Trump who invoked it, yesterday,” Macron said. Macron: When President Trump says I need to go back because there’s discussions, we’re going to talk to them, we must talk to them, that describes discussions that, generally, lead to a ceasefire. When we all signed a joint declaration on Iran, that I have here—[he proceeds to pull it from his breast pocket, unfold it, and read it]—that we discussed with President Trump, it says quite clearly: Iran is the principal source of instability, but that we all want a resolution to this crisis in Iran which leads to de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East. The intention that was shared was a ceasefire. Trump had said his rush back to DC was because he had an early-morning appointment in the Situation Room. In the end, the president sauntered into the Situation Room shortly after 2 p.m.—the meeting was delayed, the White House said, because they were waiting for Tulsi Gabbard, the conspiratorial director of national intelligence (who, just recently, condemned those who would lead us toward nuclear war). Donald Trump has always been capricious. He has always been prone to agreeing with whoever he spoke to last. He has always been willing to abandon his stated principles in favour of looking tough, or appeasing some certain constituency, or because he was influenced by TV. He has always been disdainful of multinational fora. Perhaps the greatest explanation for Trump’s sudden desire to join the war effort is that he simply cannot stand looking out of the loop. The fact is that Israel, which sees Trump as easy to manipulate, launched an incredibly risky shooting war with a well-armed regional enemy. This war is already going worse than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu anticipated, and there is no clear sign that these hostilities will end soon. Israel has not destroyed the entirety of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, nor has it gained complete control of the airspace, nor has it destroyed Iran’s ballistic capabilities. It seems, as of right now, this was a miscalculation. Trump is susceptible to being suckered into that miscalculation to save face. The past forty-eight hours with Trump have underlined two crucial lessons, ones we should have learned already: No instrument of global order can function properly with Trump in it. And his lawless, unhinged state, filled with cronies and sycophants, is now happy to engage in military action, and he has little interest in or appreciation for the risks involved. After this summit, I don’t see how anyone returns to business as usual. “I don’t think we should fool ourselves,” then prime minister Stephen Harper said in 2013. “This is the G7 plus one.” The Canadian leader made the comments on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, just as patience with the plus one was running out. Seven of the eight leaders represented at the high-level summit had come to a clear consensus: Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was a tyrant, a war criminal, and he had to go, effectively backing the rebels advancing toward Damascus. But it was the eighth member, Russian president Vladimir Putin, who held out. Insisting that “blood is on the hands of both parties,” he rejected calls to oust the autocrat. It foreshadowed what was to come. Just over six months after the summit wrapped, protesters in Ukraine succeeded in overthrowing the corrupt and kleptocratic regime in Kyiv. Their murderous president, Viktor Yanukovich, fled to Russia. As his pro-Russian state melted away, Putin gave orders to his intelligence services: prepare plans to invade. In February 2014, Russian operatives began fomenting unrest in the border regions of Ukraine. In a matter of weeks, Russian special forces seized Crimea and a strip of the Donbas region. The invasion of Ukraine had begun. The next leaders’ summit was slated for that June in Sochi. But, in late March, then US president Barack Obama convened an ad hoc meeting of the seven and came to a consensus: Russia would be disinvited and the summit would be moved to Brussels. “So be it,” sniffed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and hostilities in the Ukrainian border regions started a process that would culminate in its full-scale invasion eight years later. The ill-advised aggression prompted a level of unexpected international liberal unity. America organized arms transfers, Canada led banking sanctions, France raced to pull Europe together, Japan became one of the single largest funders of Ukraine’s self-defence—it was hard to find a freedom-loving country that wasn’t investing in Ukraine’s safety, in part as an investment in their own sovereignty and the global order. It was a collective investment in the idea that borders couldn’t be redrawn by force. To allow Russia’s unchecked aggression, to reward it by treating Moscow as a legitimate state concerned with internal norms, was unconscionable. On Monday, standing at the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Trump evoked this sordid history as he lamented Putin’s plight. “You want to have people that you can talk to, you know?” Trump said. “Putin speaks to me, he doesn’t speak to anybody else. He doesn’t want to talk, because he was very insulted when he got thrown out of the G8, as I would be, as you would be, as anybody would be. He was very insulted.” On June 16, Russia launched one of its deadliest attacks on Ukraine since the start of the war. Moscow launched more than 440 attack drones and thirty-two cruise missiles—overwhelmingly targeting civilian infrastructure. Over the night, fourteen were killed, and more than 100 were injured. “Our families had a very difficult night,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Standing in picturesque Kananaskis, thousands of kilometres away from the war, Zelenskyy underscored why he was there: “We need pressure.” Fresh military aid from Canada was welcome, he said. “It’s important for our soldiers to be strong on the battlefield. . . . To stay strong until Russia will be ready for peace negotiations. We are ready.” But Ukraine didn’t get pressure. Instead, it got a mealy mouthed statement, care of the chair’s summary of the summit. Chair’s statement: G7 Leaders expressed support for President Trump’s efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. They recognized that Ukraine has committed to an unconditional ceasefire, and they agreed that Russia must do the same. G7 Leaders are resolute in exploring all options to maximize pressure on Russia, including financial sanctions. Why it wasn’t issued as a joint declaration by all the leaders, Carney wouldn’t say. “We discussed every single word that’s in this summary,” he said. He played it off as a question of time: “Given the exceptional and fast-moving situation in Iran, we concentrated on that.” He added that “there would be things that some of us, Canada included, would say above and beyond” that statement. But we’ll never hear them, because of a desire to keep Trump sated. Carney remembers all too well how his predecessor invoked the ire of Trump, eight years ago, at the same summit in Charlevoix. Carney deftly found a way to advocate for Ukraine, call out American intransigence on the file, and still avoid directly challenging the thin-skinned president. It’s a delicate balancing act that shouldn’t be necessary. The centre of gravity for the liberal order lies to his allies, remains a believer in regime-change-via-missiles, and is more concerned about Putin’s feelings than with ending the worst land war in Europe since 1945. There’s no use for dramatics, but it’s also hard not to feel like this is the end of the world. It is unlikely that we are about to see total nuclear war, as Gabbard warns, but it feels inescapable that the dominance of the liberal world is over. There are no penalties, it seems, for launching wars or genocides. International condemnation means little, and the levers to enforce norms are no longer working. Trump doesn’t bear singular responsibility, but he has proved the most effective at wrecking this system that we spent a century building. And the rest of the world can’t keep ignoring that fact. I don’t think we should fool ourselves. This is the G6 plus one. We can only hope that this dark new reality is inspiring our liberal leaders to be more forceful and less timid. To that end, I asked Carney whether he cared about Putin’s feelings in being excluded from the summit. “It was personally offensive, to put it mildly,” Carney said, “to the citizens of Ukraine and the inhabitants of Crimea when Russia invaded in 2014. Which was the cause of the rejection.” Well said. Adapted from “The Summit at the End of the World” by Justin Ling (Substack). Reprinted with permission of the author.The post The G7 Summit Was Really about One Man first appeared on The Walrus.