Ever since the Congress of Vienna, summits of the great powers were where the world’s business was done. That ended at this week’s G7
Blink and you miss it: the G7 summit at Calgary was effectively over almost as soon as it began. Yet what we have just witnessed is nothing less than the demise of European power.
Not only did Donald Trump leave early to attend to more important business in Washington, thereby treating the other “world leaders” with unspoken but ill-disguised contempt: he also told them exactly what he thought of their overblown institution.
“The G7 used to be the G8,” he declared in his inimitably bombastic way. “Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in, and I would say that was a mistake, because you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in.”
