Tyranny is contagious – and western governments’ reluctance to name the threat is helping it spread
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here is no founding charter or admissions process to the self-selecting group of “leading” economic powers that currently numbers seven. It was the G8 from 1997 to March 2014. Then Russia annexed Crimea and had its membership suspended, establishing the rule that participating nations should not seize their neighbours’ land.
The White House used to condemn that sort of thing on the grounds that “it violates the principles upon which the international system is built”. These days, not so much. On Sunday, shortly after arriving for a G7 meeting in the Canadian resort of Kananaskis, Donald Trump told his host, the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, that Vladimir Putin’s expulsion from the club had been a “big mistake”.
Within 24 hours Trump was back in Washington. There is precedent for the early departure. In June 2018, during his first term, Trump bailed on a G7 summit to meet North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. This time he cited the escalating Israel-Iran conflict.
