EAF editors
When future historians look back on our age, they will almost
certainly mark ‘Liberation Day’ as the end of the American Century. That
was the day on which Donald Trump put an end to 80 years of global
economic leadership, accelerated US relative economic decline and
irreparably diminished the US’ international standing and soft power,
bringing to a close the most prosperous and, for the most part, peaceful
period in history thus far.
The question is whether the US retreat from, and undermining of, the
post-war order whose creation and enforcement it led, can now survive —
and whether there will be a system that survives for the United States
to rejoin when it’s ready.
The 15–17 June G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, Canada, was another
test in managing US withdrawal. Trump left the summit halfway through.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney held the event together, but, as
many observed, a G6 without the United States may have been more
productive for international cooperation.
On the eve of the Summit, Israel started bombing Iran’s nuclear and
security infrastructure, a prelude to the United States being drawn into
the conflict with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on 22 June.
This exclusive group of major industrialised liberal democracies
initially convened in 1975 as a club of six with Britain, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, before Canada joined in
1976 and then Russia in 1998. The G8 became the G7 when Russia was
suspended after its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Moscow later chose to
exit in 2017. Trump lamented Russia’s absence during his brief time in
Kananaskis.
Jeremy Paltiel explains in the first of this week’s two lead articles
that the G7 and its invitees were ‘looking to forge a baseline
consensus on stabilising trade and the global order, while accommodating
US concerns for a more robust and self-reliant defence and security
posture’.
The invitees were leaders from Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia,
Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, India, the United Arab Emirates and
Ukraine. Eight of those are G20 members, as well as a majority of the
emerging market BRICS group (minus China and Russia).
Many leaders were there primarily to meet with Trump to try to
negotiate away the Liberation Day ‘reciprocal’ tariffs. As Paltiel
suggests, ‘Trump appeared pleased that the agenda was set around his
tariff threats, viewing the other participants as mere supplicants’.
Trump left before Indian Prime Minister Modi or Australian Prime
Minister Albanese could meet with him. The only country to do a
yet-to-be-completed deal with the United States was the United Kingdom,
which seems to have put its trade relationship with its US alliance
partner above its broader global interests.
In our second lead article this week,
Alan Alexandroff argues that ‘what is left for the G7 may well be
becoming a G6’. For that to occur is instructive for the G20 and other
global forums: ‘G7 members must be willing to act without the United
States’.
The world faces huge global problems that require global solutions.
They will have to include developing countries, including large
developing countries like China, India and Indonesia — not all of which
operate under either liberal or democratic political regimes.
Cooperation to manage problems created by the United States, like the
Liberation Day tariffs, will become harder and distract from other
existential challenges.
The G20 this year is being hosted by South Africa, and a de facto
‘G19’ with truncated US involvement may be able to make progress on
shared challenges. But the G20 will be hosted by the United States in
2026, so modes of North–South cooperation that aren’t held back by the
United States will have to be found. The WTO and other forums need to
find ways like the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement
workaround for its dispute settlement mechanism to keep the United
States from taking the system down with it.
Indonesia’s President Prabowo notably snubbed his invitation to the
G7, to instead visit Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg, stopping in
Singapore on the way. Perhaps the democratically elected leader of the
world’s largest Muslim country felt he would be listened to in Moscow,
but would be doing all the listening in a summit with the G7 plus.
That’s a reminder that in working to protect the international order
from US sabotage, the rich democracies in the ‘G6’ will also need to
value the participation of major developing countries.
The APEC summit this year will be hosted by newly installed President
Lee Jae-myung in South Korea. Senior US officials have been
participating in the preliminaries. But the whole multilateralist and
pluralist raison d’etre of APEC, and the likelihood of Trump paying it
any more respect than it paid the G7 in Canada is zilch.
We have to get used to a world without the leadership of the United
States. That world is gone — reliable and constructive US engagement in
the world is unlikely for at least three years and likely several more.
When it comes to defending and rehabilitating global governance in
response, it will be up to a coalition of rich and developing countries
to build back better.
The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of
Public Policy, College of Law, Policy and Governance, The Australian
National University.
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