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Washington – Angela, Boris, Emmanuel, Justin, Mario, Yoshihide, and a relative newcomer: Joe.
They are the club’s most distinguished board of directors in global democracy, and they meet this week after four years of American turmoil and a two-year hiatus from the coronavirus.
Already on a first-name basis with relationships ranging from just months to years, leaders of the Group of Seven industrial democracies gather on Friday amid hopes that their members’ unbridled departure and a new era of face-boosted personal friendships could restore the global anti-authoritarian consensus on climate, Corona virus, China and Russia.
The G7’s return to polite quasi-normality comes as President Joe Biden seeks to restore the bloc’s steadfast US leadership, hampered by his predecessor Donald Trump’s often confrontational approach to America’s old allies. US officials believe that Biden’s decades of experience in foreign policy combined with his personal skills and popular demeanor will mitigate the ongoing resentment.
Trump had thrown a wrench into the unity of the G7, demanding that American interests be given absolute priority, threatening decades-old security guarantees, insulting colleagues, and loudly proposing inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to return to the group despite his refusal to meet Moscow’s demands. To stay outside Ukraine.
World leaders prepare to start a working session on the global economy and trade on the second day of the G7 summit on August 25, 2019.AP
Biden aims to take a new course. When asked about his goals when leaving Washington, Biden replied: “Strengthen the alliance and make it clear to Putin and China that Europe and the United States are holding together, and that the G7 will act.”
Of the seven leaders who met on Friday in Cornwall, southwest Britain, two were novices. Biden and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi took office within weeks of each other this year.
Two others have been in power for two years or less: Britain’s Boris Johnson since 2019, and Japan’s Yoshihide Suga since 2020. However, the other three have a long history together, some with Biden going back to his days in the Senate and as an MP. President.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend her last G7 summit before stepping down as chancellor in September after 16 years. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been in office since 2015 and French President Emmanuel Macron since 2017. Everyone is known for their ties to Trump on trade, defense spending, climate change and other issues.
Trump once accused Trudeau of being “very disingenuous and weak” in the context of the G7 summit. He has often criticized Merkel and Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, in similar terms and denounced Macron’s skepticism of NATO’s capabilities as “bad” and “humiliating”. Johnson was the exception, with Trump seeing him as an evil spirit.
Open hostility impeded the group’s ability to present a united front. Biden hopes to cool those ties on his first foreign trip as president.
Since taking office, Biden has personally met only one of his G7 counterparts, Suga. But in virtual sessions and phone calls, he sought to build on his personal relationships with others and said he wanted more in-person meetings.
“There is no substitute for face-to-face discussions,” Biden told Suga when they met at the White House in April. “It is those bonds of friendship and personal connection that will keep this alliance strong and vibrant for decades to come.”
Good relationships “make it easier to do business,” said Ronald Newman, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a three-time retired US ambassador.
“You won’t find that people will act against what they see as their interests just because they are friends,” he said, “but that does mean it’s easier to have conversations to explore if there are ways to bring interests closer together.”
This has not happened in the Trump years. “My sense is that we weren’t so much interested in exploring areas for compromise—we were interested in getting, or rather telling, others to do things our way,” Newman said.
Because Biden has pursued some policies identical to those of Trump, he has faced far less resistance than his predecessor, particularly winning support for a military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just weeks before Biden announced that he had decided to generally stick to Trump’s withdrawal plan, he warned US allies against any reckless moves.
Likewise, Biden’s reversal of Trump’s approval of Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline was met with a muted response from Ottawa amid the new president’s outreach to Trudeau. “The United States does not have a closer friend – it does not have a friend closer – than Canada. That is why I was my first call as president,” Biden told Trudeau.
On Wednesday, though, keystone sponsor XL pulled the plug on the project after Canadian officials failed to persuade Biden to back down from revoking his pass the day he took office.
Biden and Macron will meet in person for the first time, and French officials said Macron is keen to build on the discussions they had by phone and video. Macron, a centrist, has made no secret that he was counting on Biden’s election to bring US positions closer to France’s on the Paris climate agreement, global corporate minimum taxes, and global security issues.
But, perhaps, no leader of the Group of Seven industrialized nations has benefited more than Merkel, the group’s dean. Biden suspended Trump’s decision to reduce the US military presence in Germany and used a national security waiver to avoid hitting a German company and its CEO with sanctions over a controversial pipeline.
It is a basic fact of foreign policy that every country has its own values and interests. But there is, of course, the factor of understanding that is difficult to measure and that can form between leaders of the two sides – or sometimes not”, said Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert. “And of course it is better that it takes shape, if one has a common culture of dialogue, if one of them listens to the other, if one also tries to understand the other person’s position and convictions.”
Meanwhile, Johnson is keen to ensure Biden remains committed to the approval of Washington and London, especially as he continues to seek the post-Brexit preferential trading status with America that has been fully secured under Trump.
Trump unequivocally praised Johnson and Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, calling him “Britain’s Trump.” Biden has reacted the same as a candidate, calling the British leader a “physical and emotional clone” of Trump. However, the British government has worked hard to overcome this impression, emphasizing Johnson’s common ground with Biden on issues such as climate change and his support for international institutions.
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