Does Seven Minus One Leave Zero?
While Americans of every stripe are clutching their pearls and wringing their hands about the possible results of next month’s presidential election, the G7 (an informal grouping of seven of the world’s strongest economies – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union) is trying to figure how to work together on global policy issues even when the US itself is not engaged.
The title for my article today is taken from an anecdote presented in the Chatham House article referenced at the top of this post.
When Jamaica pulled out of the nascent West Indies Federation in 1961, Trinidad and Tobago’s then prime minister, Dr Eric Williams, famously said ‘One from ten leaves nought’. In the run up to the US elections on 5 November, the US’s longstanding allies need to ask themselves if the same logic must apply to the G7.
If Trump wins next month’s presidential election, the G7 nations are going to have to figure out how to deal with a leader of the US who doesn’t fundamentally believe in the current global alliance structure. In recent years, the G7 has become one of the most effective international mechanisms, playing a critical role in coordinating Western efforts to recover from the last pandemic and preparing for future ones. It has helped weaken Russia’s economy following the 2022 attack on Ukraine and has worked more broadly to strengthen Western economic security and resilience.
Trump is signaling that he is likely to abandon the G7 as an instrument of international economic policy if he wins the presidency again. This is effectively what he did in his first term and all observers expect that it will be repeated in a second term. U.S. allies don’t like Trump’s economic policies, and Trump is generally antipathetic toward multilateralism.
To avoid the kind of paralysis the G7 experienced during Trump’s first term in office, members of the international community are contemplating a G6+ format, including other like-minded countries such as South Korea, Australia, Singapore, or Switzerland if the US backs away.
The United States should be wary of these developments. The US position in the world is due to a general assumption among Americans (it used to be more widely shared) that it is the ‘indispensable nation,’ as Secretary of State Madeline Albright famously claimed in 1998 – that international agreements that do not include (or at least recognize) the United States will be unsuccessful. If the other global economic superpowers find out that they can navigate around – or even ignore – the United States, the US will slide into irrelevance. Just ask Britain, France, and Spain about the past couple of centuries. Or look back further to Ancient Greece, Egypt, or Rome.