In June 2018, I sat inside the White House Situation Room, dreading what was about to happen. We’d just finished preparing for Donald Trump’s trip to Canada for a Group of Seven (G7) meeting, a gathering of the world’s most powerful democracies. And the US President was pouting. He didn’t want to go. Aides had talked him out of skipping the summit, but my worry was that his attendance might actually be worse.
He did not disappoint.
He arrived late. He lectured the leaders of America’s closest friends about trade as though they were errant suppliers. At one point, he flicked a Starburst sweet across the table at the then German chancellor Angela Merkel – “Here, Angela. Don’t say I never give you anything” – a gesture that managed to be both petulant and weirdly revealing. He left early. From the plane, he detonated the joint communiqué he’d just signed, branding his Canadian host “very dishonest and weak”. And, most tellingly of all, he used the world’s premier club of democracies to demand the readmission of an autocracy, calling for Vladimir Putin’s Russia to be welcomed back into the fold. It was, I wrote after I left my role as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, as if Putin himself had drafted his talking points.
Trump then flew to the other side of the world to meet Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator he would later say he “fell in love” with (his words, not mine). It was at that point that I began telling my colleagues that the US President clearly had a weakness for strongmen, and until he was gone, it would put terrible strain on our alliances.
What looked like a tantrum in 2018 has now become national policy and as Trump wraps up another G7 meeting, it’s clear that his mood swings (and strong opinions about who America’s real pals should be) have upended the world order for a generation.
The data shows it. A new survey from the European Council on Foreign Relations found that just 11 per cent of Europeans now regard the United States as an ally. In other words, nine out of 10 of our closest friends no longer see us as “friends”, which is a record low. Indeed, support for the transatlantic alliance has been cut in half since Trump returned to office. He arrived in France this week as the most diminished American president in the history of the transatlantic alliance. Diminished not only in tanks or dollars, but in the only currency that has ever made the West more than the sum of its parts, which is trust.
Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron at the G7 summit in Evian. Taylor says he arrived in France this week as the most diminished American president in the history of the transatlantic alliance (Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP)It’s not hard to see how the figure got so low. In February, Trump launched a war against Iran without troubling to consult the allies he expected to fall in behind him. Emmanuel Macron, his host this week, said the assault took place “outside the framework of international law” – language typically reserved for adversaries, not for the leader of the free world. When the Europeans declined to leap in, Trump yanked thousands of American troops out of Germany in a fit of pique. Meanwhile, he’s menaced Greenland with talk of annexation. He’s let Ukraine slide so far down his list of priorities that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky apparently had to speak with the French President for help getting on Trump’s schedule at the summit. And not long ago, he mocked Sir Keir Starmer to his face: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”
The deeper damage is that these affronts have collectively reduced faith in America and the alliance itself. Such friendships are not built solely upon treaties and accords. Meaningful alliances are built on real beliefs, especially the shared conviction that when the worst comes, your friends will come for you. In fact, that belief is what kept the Soviet Union at bay for four decades without a shot. Now, however, such deterrence has been destroyed. The aforementioned survey found that majorities in every country polled doubt that America would defend them. And if they don’t think so, our foes like Russia certainly don’t either.
So, the G7 nations this week seemed to be doing what they believe they need to do: moving on. Nothing should alarm watchers of the West more than the fact that most of its component democracies no longer believe in America and are preparing for a future without it, or at least preparing for one in which they must have a big insurance policy if US security guarantees fall through. Trump’s fickle moods have, in their minds, morphed into something bigger than just a bad weather event. They’ve become the diplomatic equivalent of climate change. Massive. Long-term. System-changing.
If you need more concrete evidence, look at the fact that every G7 country – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom – is increasing its military spending with an eye toward greater self-reliance, with many of them veering away from buying US weaponry and instead investing in their own defence industries. Their confidence in fighting alongside America is waning. Their worry about having to fight alone is rising.
There’s also a grim poetry to the venue this week. Recall that Évian, France last hosted these talks in 2003, when the club was still the G8 and Russia sat at the table, which is the very arrangement Trump keeps trying to resurrect. That summit, too, convened in the shadow of an American war launched over the strident objections of France and Germany. While history does not repeat, it has a cruel ear for rhyme. This week, America arrived under similar circumstances, only this time after the United States delayed the summit a day so Trump could celebrate his 80th birthday with a UFC cage match on the White House lawn. It was the perfect emblem of a presidency that confuses dominance with leadership.
The question hanging over the finale of the summit is no longer whether America still leads the free world. Clearly, it does not, as G7 leaders don’t even plan to issue the usual “joint statement” at the conclusion of the multilateral meeting – a sign that the United States can’t align with its friends on a shared press release, let alone major global issues. The real question is whether our friends will wait any longer for us to get our act together. It seems like their patience is wearing thin.
Miles Taylor is the former chief of staff of the US Department of Homeland Security and has served on Capitol Hill, in the White House and at the Pentagon. He is a No 1 New York Times bestselling author, regular national security commentator, and democracy reform leader.
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