The G7 at the lake: the summit of the strong

The leaders of the world’s largest economies gathered in the Canadian mountains in the first days of June for their annual summit, and the gathering was conducted under the shadow of the largest member’s redefinition of the alliances. The trade truce that the administration had announced in May provided the summit’s most welcome backdrop, the burden-sharing demands that the year had made familiar shaped the security sessions, and the transactional style that the other members have spent the year adjusting to determined the tone of the corridors; the summit’s communique, issued after the customary final-night negotiations, carried the compromises that the adjustments produced, and the compromises were the summit’s real content.

The trade question dominated the summit’s first days, as the year’s conflict had prepared. The truce with the largest trading partner, announced from the previous summit’s stage, had opened the window that the negotiators are now working through, and the other members used the gathering to press their own cases: the extensions of the pauses, the carve-outs for their sectors, the settlement that would make the truces permanent; the American president’s responses, delivered in the characteristic register, held the line that the year has established, the deals available to the partners who offer the terms. The summit’s trade story was the negotiation’s latest instalment, and the instalment’s meaning will be decided by the weeks that follow.

The security sessions carried the year’s particular weight. The war on the continent’s edge, the defence budgets that the members have committed to, and the American insistence on the burden-sharing shaped the discussions, and the discussions produced the language that the communique could carry: the commitments to the continued support, the recognition of the members’ increased spending, and the careful avoidance of the words that would expose the divisions. The members’ private sessions, the bilaterals and the corridor conversations, carried the sharper exchanges, and the sharper exchanges are the ones that the analysts will be tracking through the year.

The summit’s host played the role that the host country’s diplomacy had prepared: the staging, the scenery, the agenda that the Canadian government had set, and the particular emphasis on the multilateral order that the year’s events have tested. The host’s themes, the resilience of the institutions, the value of the alliances, were the counterpoint to the largest member’s style, and the counterpoint was the summit’s unspoken argument; the argument was conducted in the sessions and the statements, and the argument’s outcome will be measured by the institutions’ fate through the year.

The summit closed with the communique that the compromises produced, and the communique was the document that the members could all sign: the trade language that both sides could read their own way, the security commitments that the members had already made, and the unity that the format requires. The gathering’s real business was conducted in the corridors, and the corridors’ verdict was the one that the year has been delivering since January: the alliance of the largest economies is being renegotiated, the renegotiation is being conducted at the pace that the largest member sets, and the other members are adjusting with the mixture of defiance and accommodation that the adjustment requires. The G7 at the lake was the summit of the strong, and the strong, in the year’s reading, is the style that the others have learned to live with; the learning is the summit’s lasting product.