A bright spark in the Canadian team preparing the G7 Kananaskis summit, in the ridiculously beautiful Canadian Rockies, decided to insert the issue of wildfires onto a crowded agenda. It seemed an eminently sensible and Canadian thing for the eminently sensible Canadian prime minister,Mark Carney, to do.
After all there are currently an estimated 225 blazes in Canada, including 120 classified as out of control, and they are raging to the west in British Columbia across to northern parts of Alberta. Indeed it is likely to be Canada’s second worst year on record for wildfires. Moreover, Carney had an ingenious solution ready to hand – a Kananaskis wildfire charter including “greater equipment interoperability” between theG7members.
But unfortunately wildfires were already on the G7 agenda, albeit in an altogether broader, even more existential sense. Not only was theworld ablaze, but the human flame-thrower better known as the president of the United States would be in attendance and this would mean the whole two and a half days would leave Carney on one long wildfire watch. Equipment interoperability might not be enough if Trump suddenly ignited. The prospect of Trumpian explosions, fire alarms going off and spontaneous combustion understandably haunted the host’s planning. After all, It was Carney’s task as much as possible to make this annual showcase of western resolve and shared values appear as coherent as possible.
The last time Trump attended a G7 summit hosted by Canada he arrived late,insulted his host Justin Trudeau as weak, and then left the summit for Singapore, dispatching a message from Air Force One dissociating himself and the US from a painfully negotiated 28-point communique. Trudeau had been impudent enough to criticise Trump’s trade tariffs, Trump had discovered. It was one of the most disastrous conclusions to a G7 in the institution’s storied 50 years.
Carney faced a dilemma in how to prevent a repetition. He had just been elected prime minister by standing up to Trump. He could hardly treat Trump’s visit as some kind of homecoming to the 51st state. Nor could he or other members of the G7 pretend they did not resent the unresolved trade tariffs the president had imposed.
Carney’s solution is to let the issue of G7 members trade deals be handled primarily in bilateral talks, and to make the main agenda as consensual as possible.
With the kind of tact only a former central bank governor can muster, Carney has decided to try to minimise the threat of drama by constructing a mildly Canadian, deeply earnest, even soporific, agenda. Carney’s chosen topics for the summit are critical mineral supply chains, energy security, disinformation on the internet and, if things are becoming a little too animated, the global economic outlook and reform of the World Trade Organization. A discussion on “anti-market practices by large, non-G7 economies” – code for China – was promised by the Carney team. Not even Trump would be able to stage a walk out over quantum computing.
There would be no ambitious joint communique since that would be a wildfire attractant.
But for some experienced Trump watchers the Carney fireproof plan may yet fail.
First, Trump is easily bored. Everything has to happen SOON, or IMMEDIATELY. He likes to leave the world on tenterhooks; a deal is CLOSE or MAY NEVER HAPPEN. Above all, he likes to be the centre of attention and in none of these sessions, except for the one on artificial intelligence, was the president likely to be a lead character. When Trump gets bored he gets restless, and starts idly to play with matches. To liven things up, as a recent article in the Atlantic pointed out, he will fire off ill-tempered social-media posts, broadsides at policymakers, or premature declarations of victory, normally over an ally.
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Second, Carney knows, given the world is being remade in front of the G7 leaders’ eyes, harsh reality could not be kept from the entire summit.
At some point the only superpower in the room will be required to explain, in more than a tweet or a press conference aside, if he feels he has a duty to use diplomatic leverage over his allies in Moscow and Jerusalem, or is content to let events play out, with all the consequent and avoidable misery. Even the president of the United States can be made accountable sometimes.