Should we really be shocked, or even mildly surprised, when an upstart American president upsets the Group of Seven industrialized nations and suggests non-Western powers should enter the club?
President Donald Trump trashed this weekend’s G-7 summit by not only bad-mouthing his counterparts over trade, singling out the Canadian hosts for extra bile, but also arguing that Russia should rejoin the group just four years after it was expelled over the Ukrainian war. Other G-7 leaders were distinctly unamused.
Trump’s behavior was crude even by his undiplomatic standards. Yet he was hardly the first U.S. leader to question the G-7’s relevance.