WASHINGTON — Three years ago, President Joe Biden met with the leaders of the world’s largest democracies in Cornwall, England, for his first Group of Seven meeting as president and declared that “America was back at the table.”
But as Biden gathers in Fasano, Italy, this week for what may be his final G7 summit, uncertainty surrounding the upcoming election makes it unclear whether that message will endure.
President Biden’s meeting with the G7 leaders, which ended on Friday, was overshadowed by the possibility of former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, returning to the White House, and the recent victories of the right in the European Parliament in France and Germany, both of which threaten the alliance’s shared goals, such as continued support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, which has been a major theme of this year’s G7 talks.
So while Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a 10-year security pact that commits U.S. military assistance to Ukraine well beyond Biden’s term in office, that promise could fall apart if Trump wins the next election or if a divided Congress chooses not to continue financial assistance to Ukraine.
“The possibility of a further weakening of the political center on both sides of the Atlantic hangs over all of this dialogue,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent think tank, and a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University.
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“And some of the steps taken by the G7 were an attempt to buy insurance, so to speak, against the rise of political leaders or parties that were not particularly keen to support Ukraine,” he said.
Trump, the Republican front-runner, has said he supports aid to Ukraine in the form of loans but has not taken a position on whether the United States should support Ukraine financially in the long term. Trump has said that if he is elected to a second term, he could finalize a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia within 24 hours.
President Trump has warned that if elected to a second term, he would pull the US out of NATO if European countries do not increase their financial obligations to the alliance. “Why won’t Europe give more money to help Ukraine?” Trump said in a post on his social media site Truth Social on April 18.
Trump’s election could ‘completely reverse’ many of G7’s goals
Among the G7 goals that could be at risk if Trump is re-elected are global efforts to combat climate change, which the former president has repeatedly downplayed as a major threat.
“One of the great things about the G7 is that we’re all democracies, so the leaders here don’t get to choose from day to day how the politics of their countries work,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters in Italy when asked about the impact of November’s presidential election on G7 talks. “They leave that up to their own people.”
Like Biden, other G7 leaders are facing electoral challenges. British Chancellor Rishi Sunak last month announced a general election for July 4 amid growing public discontent with the Conservative Party, while French President Emmanuel Macron has called for parliamentary elections to begin June 30 after heavy defeats for liberal-centre parties in EU elections.
Ahead of this week’s G7 summit, John Kirby, the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator, told reporters at President Biden’s first G7 summit in Cornwall, England, that “there was a real sense of relief in the room that the United States was back and actually leading the negotiating table.”
“And that’s true now more than ever,” he said, pointing to Biden’s message that the U.S. needs to “strengthen its unity and demonstrate that our democracies can still serve our people and people around the world.”
When Biden takes office as president in 2021, he has positioned his foreign policy as one that counters the rise of autocratic nations around the world and has demonstrated an emphasis on U.S. leadership in traditional Western alliances, a stark difference from Trump, who promoted an “America First” policy on the world stage.
During his presidency, Trump famously refused to sign a joint statement with G7 allies amid ongoing tensions over tariffs following the 2018 G7 summit in Quebec City, Canada. As he was leaving the meeting aboard Air Force One, Trump blasted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Twitter.
Daniel Hamilton, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s US and Europe Center, said a Trump victory over Biden in November would “totally flip” the G7’s priorities.
“You can look at the record,” Hamilton said, “and you can see that when he was president, he didn’t do much with the G7. He didn’t sign any agreements. They had big conflicts. I don’t think he would find those meetings very useful, and we’re going to go back to the same old problems.”
What the G7 allies agreed on in Italy
In a written statement signed by Biden and other G7 leaders before they left Italy this week, the leaders pledged on a number of fronts, including maintaining solidarity with Ukraine, supporting the Gaza ceasefire agreement offered to Hamas for the release of Israeli hostages, reaffirming their commitment to gender equality, taking concrete steps to address climate change and pollution, and supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific while opposing what the Biden administration calls Chinese export excesses.
Kupchan, who served on the National Security Council in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, said it was unclear what G7 priorities might be undermined if Trump beats Biden in the November election. “Trump 2.0 could be different from Trump 2.0.”
“I think the biggest impact will be that our G7 partners and allies around the world will be forced to question the credibility and stability of the United States,” he said, “not because of any particular policies that Trump might implement, but because it will become abundantly clear that the United States is going through a stage of deep polarization and political dysfunction.”
“Allies that have relied heavily on the United States for their security will be forced to hedge their risks,” he added.
Biden and the other G7 leaders also spoke on Friday with Pope Francis, who, in a rare appearance before the coalition, warned that rapidly evolving artificial intelligence must never gain an advantage over humanity.
The agreement between Biden and Zelensky establishes a framework for long-term U.S. support for the Ukrainian military and signals solidarity with 15 other countries that have signed similar agreements in support of Ukraine.
Biden said the deal aims to provide arms and ammunition to Ukraine over 10 years, expand intelligence sharing between the two countries, train Ukrainian forces at European and U.S. military bases, and invest in Ukraine’s defense industrial base. Biden stressed that the deal does not send U.S. troops to Ukraine.
“If you want to look at this as anti-Trump, you can,” said Hamilton, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, “but I think they’re just trying to send a message to not only Donald Trump but also Putin that they support Ukraine.”
NATO meeting in the US next month presents big opportunity for Biden
In a related move, the United States and other G7 leaders agreed to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan to rebuild damaged infrastructure and buy weapons, secured by interest from Russian assets frozen after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The Biden administration also announced $300 million in new sanctions against key parts of Russia’s financial sector, as well as Russian individuals and companies that support Russia’s war efforts.
Biden said the new actions show Putin “that he can’t wait for us, that he can’t divide us, and that we will stand with Ukraine until they win this war.”
Biden has made US membership in NATO a key issue in the 2024 presidential election, and criticised Trump’s February speech in which he threatened to not help NATO countries attacked by Russia as a “dangerous” and “un-American signal to the world”.
It’s a debate Biden wants to have, and it marks his next big opportunity to demonstrate unity on behalf of Ukraine: Washington’s hosting of the 2024 NATO summit from July 9-11.
“Right now, the level of unity between the G7 and NATO is great,” Kupchan said, “but the question no one can answer is: How long can this last? And is this enough to get Ukraine back on its feet?”
Contributed by Reuters. Joey Garrison can be reached at X @joeygarrison.
