On the G7 Summit

The G7 Summit, which has just started in Japan, has been used by President Obama to send a few darts against Donald Trump. Fine. Everything that can be done to fight Trump´s threatening campaign should be welcome. But the key issues at the meeting were not about Trump´s race towards the White House. There was a mixed vinaigrette salad on the table. Each leader came to the meeting with her or his own concerns. Japan, for instance, is more than ever worried about China. In some ways that apprehension is shared with the US, as far as it concerns the disputed islands in the South China Sea. Europe is anxious about unstoppable migration flows and their tremendous destabilising impact on the traditional way of doing politics, particularly the rise of all types of populist ideas. But the show most go on. That´s why we have these summits: they allow the leaders to pretend they are apprehensive with and responding to global matters when, in fact, they are just trying to address their own individual domestic challenges. Politics, including international affairs, remain focussed on narrow national agendas.