International summit meetings end with a “family photo.” But the photos marking the end of the G7 seaside meeting in Japan in May 2016 look like the opening scene of a disaster movie. The assembled world leaders were thinking not about an oncoming tsunami, but about problems that seem trivial and malleable by today’s standards.
Cameron, Hollande, Juncker, Merkel, Renzi – all of them are gone. Indeed, Donald Tusk, then president of the Council of the European Union, is now Prime Minister of Poland. Japan’s Shinzo Abe was assassinated. Others’ political careers were more or less unsuccessful. The last one, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, was a new star elected in 2016 but became a pariah when he resigned last week.
The tone of the current debate is volatile and panicky. As the era of Trump 2.0 approaches, other major powers appear to be without a leader. France and Germany are in a political crisis. Britain is languishing on the sidelines. In Italy, only Giorgia Meloni has shown a sure touch, despite being just a gadfly in 2016. The lineup for the new era will vary widely, even in small countries. Slovakia’s Robert Fico, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Austria’s incoming leader Herbert Kickle were all politically active in 2016. But they were unusual. Their heretical views now seem almost mainstream. Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, just had a three-hour conversation with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. It’s hard to imagine that Bill Gates, the ultra-centrist Microsoft tycoon, would be at the top of the list of billionaires in 2016.
I can forgive some nostalgia. For all their flaws, consensus politicians who try to make the existing system work are reassuring and relatable. Radical upstarts with bombastic rhetoric may finally learn a lesson when they collide with reality. But in the meantime, we have to bear additional costs and risks.
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But living under the old regime also came with many costs and risks. For example, anyone concerned about President-elect Trump’s obstinacy toward Ukraine should read Bob Woodward’s book War. In it, he talks about the Biden administration bowing to the Kremlin’s nuclear threat in 2022. As a result, Ukraine had to forgive the defeat of 30 thousand people. Russian troops leave Kherson with equipment. Similarly, the AfD’s pro-Kremlin tendencies may be worrying. But it was the unapologetically mainstream Chancellor Merkel who forced the Nord Stream 2 Russian-German gas pipeline through – and still thinks she made the right decision.
As British journalist Will Lloyd argues, the leaders of the 2016 summit did not simply misread issues such as mass immigration, rapid technological change, media fragmentation, and Russian and Chinese reversionism. do not have. Their hubris and complacency sowed the seeds for the destruction of the entire post-1991 liberal consensus. They seemed out of line and arrogant. The economic and political system they operated worked brilliantly for some people, but horribly bad for others. Probably deplorable. But they also have the right to vote. As a result, social, political and economic models will likely change fundamentally.
But that does not preclude a strong international security system. Highly progressive personal taxes, strong immigration controls, a dignitary economy, and vigorously defended social norms were all characteristics of life in the West during the Cold War. It’s completely outdated. But that could change. European allies have repeatedly flinched from America’s aggressive foreign policy, from the Indochina war to Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Panama. But they endured it. Because being a voluntary part of the American empire was better than involuntary submission to the Soviet empire.
Looking back, the comfortable times of 2016 may have been an anomaly. If we want to, we can survive whatever happens next.
Edward Lucas is a non-resident senior fellow and senior advisor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering important topics related to European and North American foreign policy. All opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the positions or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
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