The G-7 was a great idea — until it became one against six

Fifty years ago, it seemed like such a good idea. At the initiative of the West German and French leaders, the six leading industrialized democracies convened their first regular meeting to manage a troubled world — problems included the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the oil shocks and stagflation. They later became the Group of Seven, then briefly 8, then 7 again. But as this club concludes its latest summit in the Canadian Rockies by defining success merely as avoiding a rage quit by the American guest, one wonders: What’s the point anymore?

The world is on fire from eastern Europe to the Middle East and beyond, and the G-7 leaders are at odds over how to analyze, let alone solve, any of these conflicts. French President Emmanuel Macron and others want Israel to desist from further escalation against Iran. US President Donald Trump may not have wanted Israel to attack Iran while his own envoy was trying to negotiate a deal with Tehran, but now that the war is underway he seems fine with Israel finishing the job.

Macron also intends to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state. By contrast, Trump’s ambassador to Israel told Bloomberg that the US no longer believes in a two-state solution, not even in the long term.

The discord over the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has even deeper roots. Trump promised to end it in a single day but, five months into his second term, has all but walked away from even trying. The blame belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin (who once was the 8th summiteer in the group, until he was kicked out for annexing parts of Ukraine in 2014). Putin shows no interest in good-faith negotiations and adroitly strings Trump along — the two just had another call, after which Trump even suggested (to Macron’s horror) that Putin might mediate the Israel-Iran showdown.

As Trump wavers in supporting Ukraine, the Europeans understand that they need to step up; they are urging much harsher sanctions against Russia. In that demand, they have backers in the US Congress, even among Republicans. But Trump, so far, has other instincts.

That’s hardly a secret to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who does not represent a G-7 nation but is again on the guest list, along with leaders from the Global South such as South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa. Both men were recently humiliated by Trump in reality-TV-inspired ambushes at the White House — Trump in effect accused his South African guest of presiding over genocide against White Afrikaners.

The host, Canada’s Mark Carney, survived his own visit to the White House relatively unscathed but owes his election largely to his promise to Canadians to resist one of Trump’s most outlandish taunts: his repeated threat to annex Canada as America’s 51st state. Apropos outlandish threats: Macron none-too-subtly traveled to Canada via Greenland, to show support for that Danish territory, which Trump also covets.

All this and more is happening against the backdrop of the trade wars that Trump has launched against his fellow summiteers and other guests (Mexico’s leader is also invited). Coordinating a harmonious and open global monetary and commercial regime was the original purpose of these annual summits. Now the best that the six non-American participants can hope for is to talk Trump out of his worst protectionist impulses before even more draconian trade barriers snap into action next month.

Déjà vu all over again, you might shrug. After all, Trump already disrupted a G-7 meeting in Canada once. That was in 2018, when he balked at signing the joint communique — the ritual common statement produced at the end of a summit — and for good measure called his host, Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau, “dishonest and weak.”

At the time the G-7 could still write off the drama as a breach of decorum rather than the beginning of its own demise. That is becoming harder. (NATO, which holds its summit next week, is nervous for the same reason.) The underlying issue is that Trump doesn’t share the values of the other six democracies and no longer has any checks on his whims. To the extent that the G-7 used to embody “the West,” that common basis is gone.

Running a summit in these circumstances is “like preparing the red carpet for Godzilla,” one Canadian official told the Financial Times. Nobody expected agreement on anything of substance.Carney has even scrapped the formality of trying to issue a joint communique at the end of the meeting. As it happens, Trump didn’t even stick around that long.

All this is great news if you’re watching from Moscow or Beijing. Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in particular, probably delights as the formerly US-led West dissolves in slow motion, just as he tries to rally other blocs under China’s hegemony — while the G-7 summit is in progress, he’s visiting Kazakhstan for meetings with central Asian nations.

So don’t be confused by a few press releases from the scenic Kananaskis Valley, touting a tariff reversed here or a new investment pledged there. Carney can claim a success because Trump left before he could embarrass any of his counterparts. But these summits have outlived their context. They were made for a world in which America led and like-minded allies helped in striving for global stability and shared prosperity. That era is gone. So is the reason for having the G-7 at all.