Uninvited Guests: Putin and Trump Haunt the G7 Summit

The Media is Missing the Big Picture (Again)

Russia has not been invited to G7 summits since it illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. But once again, this year, Vladimir Putin will be as important a figure at the meeting as any of those invited to attend by the Italian hosts of the event. His malign presence and that of his supporters like Donald Trump and the U.S. Republican Party are looming over many of the items on the summit agenda as well as individual concerns of many of the meeting’s actual attendees.

The Media Once Again Missing the Bigger Picture

Unfortunately, the way these meetings are being presented in the media does not make it any easier to see what is really at stake. For example, the New York Times in its coverage of the opening of the summit has focused primarily on the political challenges faced by some of the leaders in attendance without digging deeper and exploring how those challenges are intimately related to the major issues from Ukraine to Gaza to global peace and stability that the leaders have convened to discuss.

Sadly and predictably, the Times analysis also seemed contrived to draw attention to U.S. politics in a way that presented President Biden as on the ropes. Somehow, tellingly, they even managed to work the completely extraneous and politically irrelevant conviction of the president’s son on gun charges into the story.

Such contortionism is both misleading and unnecessary. First, they could just as easily have presented Biden as the leader of the major economy enjoying the most robust growth of any in the group, one who is coming off a long string of political victories for his party, one who has had an extraordinary record of major legislative successes that have strengthened the U.S. (despite predictions of failure by the Times and other major media), and one who has led the resurgence of the Western alliance and peace efforts in the Middle East despite political opposition and controversy at home.

Perhaps that is too much to hope for a paper whose motto has become “All the News That’s Fit to Both-Sides.”  However, if the Times or other media outlets took the time to present the bigger picture of the real connections between U.S. politics and the global risks we face, the story they presented would not only have been more accurate it would have been much more compelling.

That is because the story of the war in Ukraine and that of right-wing populists in America and throughout most of the G7 is not just linked, it is on many levels, the same story. Indeed, the depravity of another right-wing populist regime, that in Israel, is also intimately linked to the bigger story as well as to the Fasano agenda.

Indeed, finally seeing the connection between so many of the items competing for leaders’ attention is one of the reasons that there is an even greater sense of urgency for those leaders to shift some of their policies and to take strong actions, particularly in the case of Ukraine. (As it happens, the bigger story is one that the Times and other media have gotten critically wrong or under-reported multiple times over the past decade.)

One of the first things announced by the teams of the leaders gathered in Italy was an agreement—at last—to use Russian assets seized after the invasion of Ukraine to help finance the defense and rebuilding of the victims of the Russian aggression. It comes as, slowly but surely, the U.S. and other allies are lifting restrictions on the type of military aid that is being provided to Ukraine and on how the weapons being provided may be used. Finally, although far too slowly, Washington and western powers are untying the hands of the Ukrainians and letting them engage the Russians as they must if they are to have any chance of victory.

Also to be announced today is a 10 year agreement promising close coordination between the U.S. and Ukraine and on-going support. While the agreement is largely symbolic (Trump could and probably would trashcan it in a second.) it is a further sign that the U.S. and allies want to bolster the fact and appearance of their commitment to Kyiv and the people of that beleaguered nation.

Why now? Because there is a growing recognition of the profound risks to all the countries of the G7 and indeed of the world of further Russian gains against Ukraine. Leaders are beginning to piece together the reality that Russia’s attack against its neighbor was not only not an isolated incident, not only part of a much broader Russian agenda to extended its influence across Eastern Europe, but part of such an agenda that was achieving enormous success.  

Very Active Measures

This reality has been clear to many Europeans, particularly those from states that border Russia, for years. But others, including those in Washington, the reality has been made clearer by recent developments. Russia has sought to gain further influence in Georgia (a country whose borders it crossed in 2008 in order to seize key borderlands.) Russia supported the political campaigns of right wing advocates of its agenda in Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia. Russia has made it clear it seeks further control over a portion of Moldova. It has conducted hybrid attacks and made threats against Poland and the Baltics.

Pull the camera back a bit and suddenly it is clear. Ukraine is not a local territorial conflict. It is part of a concerted effort to restore Russian influence over the Eastern bloc of states it once controlled during the Soviet Era. Indeed, that effort, to restore Russia by whatever means necessary to the status it had when it was the U.S.S.R. is clearly the central obsession of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

That is why stopping Russia in Ukraine is so critical. Seeing how precarious that country’s position became as the MAGA right in the US held up funding for it has seemingly—one hopes—awakened G7 and other leaders to how essential it is that Russia not only be stopped in Ukraine but that the cost of that war be so high that they dare not undertake further aggression.

But the big picture view of the context for this G7 meeting goes further. The losses endured by many of the leaders at the G7 meeting in recent European elections were to right wing populist groups that are funded by and closely linked to Russia. (Host of the G7 meeting, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s Prime Minister was one of those right wing leaders who benefitted in those elections although she is a special case, a right wing leader whose coalition includes some pretty nasty right wing characters who has also stepped up to support Ukraine.) Active measures by the Russians seek to extend their influence more deeply in the West than it ever was during the Cold War.

Nowhere is that truer, of course, than in the United States. Donald Trump’s close ties to Russia, his admiration for Putin, his efforts to undermine Ukraine, the links between his advisors and family and Russia are well-known. (How is it not a bigger scandal that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and close foreign policy aide Richard Grenell are involved in a building project in Russia-leaning Serbia that will include a monument to “the victims of NATO?”) Indeed, they are so well known that we are numb to them—which is really a metric indicating Russian active measures are working. So too, of course, is the fact that Trump’s entire political party has embraced his stance—hence, the delays in funding Ukraine.

The influence of Russia is even seen in another of the priority items that will be discussed at the G7 Summit and that is the Israel-Gaza conflict. Russia is closely allied with Iran and they have been actively supportive of Hamas as well as of other Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Syria. Interestingly, Putin and Netanyahu have also cultivated a close relationship—so closely that the Netanyahu government has been a notable laggard in its support of Ukraine. How does one explain the both-sides approach of the Russians here? Why do they do it? Well, in some respects, they do it for the same reason dogs are so attentive to their undercarriages. Because they can be. It allows them greater influence in a region in which they see the U.S. having waning interest. Further, instability like that in Israel-Gaza is seen as a time and resources sap for the U.S., one that has served as a distraction and cover for MAGA GOP efforts to, for example, hold up funding for Ukraine.

A Looming Sea Change in Global Politics

Terrifyingly, at precisely the moment that it is clear that Russia is so actively involved in a campaign to undermine the U.S., the West and the international institutions that we have worked to build since the end of the Second World War, it is possible that within 5 months an active supporter of Russia, Trump, could seize the levers of power in the U.S. It is understood that almost immediately he would work to advance the Russian agenda, withdrawing support for Ukraine and NATO, turning U.S. attention inward in ways that will enable Russian adventurism, and embracing policies that will promote deep division in the U.S. and, if Trump’s last term is any indication, will weaken Russia’s principle adversary in profound ways.

The specter of that kind of sea change in geopolitics is made more worrying still by the prospect of further right-wing gains across the continent of Europe--perhaps beginning with French elections in July.  It is hard to see these as dissociated from Moscow when one of Putin’s cheerleaders, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, hailed recent victories by the right in European parliamentary elections as triumphs for Russia and defeats for Western leaders they deride like Frances Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz.

The prospect of a Trump victory will surely be discussed behind the scenes in Puglia, the Italian region in which the G7 meetings are taking place. It is surely the motivation to move forward with finding alternative forms of financing for Ukraine and for Biden’s effort to at least signal stability in America’s resolve to resist Russia’s onslaught in that country.  Indeed, the specter of such a catastrophe for the Western Alliance—and make no mistake about it, a Trump win would amount to an end to the global order that the U.S. fought for in World War II and has led ever since—promises to get even grimmer in a month at the upcoming NATO Summit in Washington, DC which everyone recognizes could be the alliance’s last if MAGA is victorious in November.

When the G7 leaders turn their attention to the global economy or to global threats like the climate crisis, no doubt they will also have in the front of their minds a much more important absent leader, Xi Jinping of China. Russia is a secondary player economically and on many transnational issues.  But to understand the dynamics at the current G7 Summit and at the upcoming NATO Summit, it is essential to understand the evolving, deteriorating geopolitics of the relationship between Russia and those countries seeking peace and stability in the world. It is also key to recognize that concerns are heightened because the prospect of even more disturbing developments on that front could be just around the corner.

American voters, for whom Fasano, Italy may seem very far away, should be paying attention not just because their interests are at stake but because they are the ones who in many ways will have the deciding say in determining how these current challenges unfold. If Americans reject Putin’s party here in the U.S. and recommit to support for NATO, Ukraine and the world order our parents and grandparents fought for, it will likely be a decisive blow against Putin’s grand and ugly ambitions. If however, we choose to enable the dictator in the Kremlin, we will not just be inviting a gutting of our own democracy, we will be increasing the peril democracies everywhere will face.