Working alongside western democratic allies has not been a natural fit for Donald Trump. The US president left the recently concluded G7 summit in Canada early, with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron assuming this was to work on addressing the most severe escalation between Iran and Israel in decades.
But Trump offered little communication with other G7 members, which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK, of what his plans were. He said he had to leave the summit “for obvious reasons”, though failed to elaborate on what he meant.
After exiting the summit, he lambasted Macron on social media. Trump wrote: “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.” Trump continued by saying his exit was due to something “much bigger than that” – adding, “Emmanuel always gets it wrong.”
This has prompted discussion over whether US forces may join Israel’s strikes on Iran. Despite initially distancing the US from the Israeli attacks, Trump said on June 17: “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.”
He has since demanded Tehran’s “unconditional surrender”, while also issuing a chilling threat to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing him as an “easy target.”
The pressure campaign employed by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to convince Trump that the time is right for a military assault on Iran seems to be working.
Exploiting Trump’s impulsive nature, Netanyahu may soon be able to convince Trump to give Israel what it needs to destroy Iran’s underground uranium enrichment sites: a 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bomb and a B-2 bomber to carry it.
The US’s western allies have been left scrambling to interpret Trump’s social media posts and figure out the real reason he left the G7 summit early.
This wasn’t the first time that Trump has left a G7 forum early. In 2018, the last time such a meeting was held in Canada, Trump also left early after Macron and the then Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, promised to confront Trump over the imposition of tariffs on US allies.
The latest G7 summit also wasn’t the first time Trump has treated traditional US allies with suspicion. Trump has cast doubt on US willingness to defend NATO allies if they don’t pay more for their own defense. He has repeatedly threatened to leave the alliance and has frequently denigrated it – even calling alliance members “delinquent.”
Trump thinks the US gains an advantage by abandoning relationships with “free riders.” But experts have made clear alienating allies makes the US weaker. While the alliance system has given the US unprecedented influence over the foreign policies of US allies in the past, Trump’s pressure to increase their defense spending will make them more independent of the US in the long-term.
Trump seems to prefer a world guided by short-term self-interest at the expense of long-term collective security. Indeed, with an “America first” agenda, multilateral cooperation is not Trump’s strong suit. With the G7, Trump is yet again making clear that he does not fit in, nor does he want to.
Because the G7 is small and relatively homogenous in membership, meetings between members are supposed to promote collective and decisive decision-making. However, even the task of coming up with a joint statement on the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel proved challenging.
Trump eventually joined other leaders in calling for deescalation in the Middle East, and the G7 was in agreement that Iran cannot acquire nuclear weapons. But Trump’s social media activity since then has left US allies in the dark over what role the US might play in the conflict.
Trump also alarmed G7 members with calls for Russia to return to the forum. He claimed that the war in Ukraine would not have happened had Moscow not been ejected from the former G8 grouping in 2014.
Then, on his way out of the summit, Trump bragged to reporters that Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, “doesn’t speak to anybody else” but him. Trump added that Putin was insulted when Russia was thrown out of the G8, “as I would be, as you would be, as anybody would be.”
Following weeks of frustration over Russia’s refusal to engage in serious peace talks about ending the war in Ukraine, Trump seems to have returned to being Putin’s most loyal advocate.
Hostility toward multilateralism
During Trump’s first term, he pushed multilateralism to the brink. But he did not completely disengage. The US withdrew from the Paris climate accords, the nuclear deal with Iran and negotiations for a trade deal with Pacific nations – and Washington imposed sanctions against officials of the International Criminal Court.
However, when multilateral initiatives served Trump’s short-term objectives, he was willing to get on board. A trade deal struck with Canada and Mexico in his first term Trump described as “the most important” ever agreed by the US. He said the deal would bring thousands of jobs back to North America.
The second Trump administration has been even more hostile to multilateralism. Not only has the trade deal with Canada and Mexico been undermined by Trump’s love of tariffs, his administration has been more antagonistic toward almost all of the US’s traditional allies. In fact, most of Trump’s ire is reserved for democracies not autocracies.
In contrast to the G7, where he clearly felt out of place, Trump was in his element during his May trip to the Middle East. Trump has a more natural connection to the leaders of the Gulf who do not have to adhere to democratic norms and human rights, and where deals can get done immediately.
Trump left the Middle East reveling in all of the billion-dollar deals he made, which he exaggerated were worth US$2 trillion. The G7, on the other hand, doesn’t offer much to Trump. He sees it as more of a nuisance.
The G7 forum is supposed to reassure the public that the most powerful countries in the world are united in their commitment to stability. But Trump’s antics are undermining the credibility of that message. It is these antics that risk dragging the west into a dangerous confrontation with Iran.
Natasha Lindstaedt is a professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
