Superpower supremacy to saving the planet – the big challenges for the G7
Face to face multi-lateral diplomacy is back. The band is getting back together, but the world has changed since the G7 last met.
Our species and our planet face grave threats and the West’s autocratic rivals have prospered and grown more powerful.
There is a huge amount at stake for those who want the world led by open, democratic, free societies.
COVID vaccines
Coronavirus is the biggest challenge for the G7‘s first face-to-face summit since the pandemic broke out. Until the entire world is vaccinated, we all remain at risk of a new variant sending us back to square one.
Former British ambassador to the US who knows Joe Biden well, Sir Peter Westmacott, told Sky News the president and his allies know this is their number one priority.
“This virus is going to contaminate international business, travel, holiday making, unless we can eradicate it or pretty much eradicate it. It’s not good enough for one or two countries to do really well. So we have to work together on this, just like we have to work together if we’re going to save the planet,” he said.
And if the West fails to lead in vaccinating the world, its claim to global moral leadership could be fatally undermined.
Climate crisis
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the world must apply the lessons learnt in the battle against COVID to tackling the second biggest challenge – climate change.
On the eve of the summit, America’s new president wrote that the US is “back in the chair on the issue of climate change” and “we have an opportunity to deliver ambitious progress that curbs the climate crisis”.
Economic recovery
The G7 needs to resuscitate a global economy weakened by the pandemic.
But even before the virus, millions were so disenchanted with the way things are run economically that they voted for populists like Donald Trump.
The G7 must convince them that the economic integration, globalisation and multilateral institutions that the West has worked so hard to build up are worth their mettle. Otherwise the populists will be back, maybe even Trump himself.
Sir Kim Darroch was British ambassador to the US.
He told Sky News that allies will remain nervous about that for some time to come, saying: “More people voted for Donald Trump [in 2020] than they did in 2016. So there is a way to go for them to be convinced that the American cause has been reset in a stable and consistent way for the foreseeable future.”
China
China is a thorny issue the G7 knows it must handle carefully.
Its trampling of human rights in Hong Kong cannot be ignored. Likewise its treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang – genocidal, or near enough. And its bellicose statements about Taiwan.
If the G7 is serious about what it calls values-based diplomacy, it cannot turn a blind eye to any of these. But it can’t afford to alienate China either. It will be a tricky balancing act.
Former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Sky News the G7 needs to be robust when it comes to the way China is behaving.
“An attack is not necessarily by tanks or aeroplanes,” he said. “On the contrary, you can use economic coercion as part of your aggressiveness. And that’s exactly what China is exercising.”
Mr Rasmussen suggests the free world applies an “all for one, one for all” approach to China’s economic bullying. That way Beijing might think twice about using its size and power to coerce smaller nations economically.
Superpower supremacy
For some there’s nothing less at stake at this summit than who is going to run the world in the years ahead. Democracies or autocracies?
Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned the main challenge in the coming years will be the fight between autocracy and democracy, autocracy primarily represented by China and Russia, and to counter the advancing autocracies there’s the need to rally around basic democratic principles.
If that sounds a bit abstract, don’t underestimate how much that contest could effect us all. “It’s an existential question, it’s a question about who will set the global norms and standards in the future,” he argues.
Giving one example, Mr Rasmussen said: “You can use artificial intelligence to make our lives better and easier, but you can also use artificial intelligence to strengthen surveillance of your people, controlling your people. And if it’s Beijing who sets the international norms and standards for the use of artificial intelligence, semiconductors and data flows, etc, then we would undermine privacy and individual liberty. And that is what is at stake.”
Fortunately for the West, if it can get the individual challenges right, it has a better chance of winning the bigger battle, seeing off the threat from autocracies.
An alliance of democracies that can lead on COVID, lead on climate change and lead a global economic recovery will be a more appealing alternative to autocratic regimes in Moscow and Beijing – and more likely to reclaim its preeminent position. Failure will only strengthen Russia and China.
Hope for global action
What happens in Cornwall will have an impact on all our lives.
The good news is this G7 is better placed than many before to achieve unity and success. Recent summits have been marred by Donald Trump’s impatience with the whole idea of western multilateral democracy.
Before that, the inclusion of Russia as part of the G8 group led inevitably to watered down compromise resolutions.
This G7 includes a reenergised America deeply committed to its principles, and the state of the world gives an urgency and potential for focus we have not seen in a long time.
US
Iran confirms it has agreed to ceasefire with Israel – as Trump declares it will begin within hours
A “complete and total ceasefire” has been agreed between Israel and Iran, according to Donald Trump.
The US president made the announcement on Truth Social – hours after Tehran launched a missile strike on a US army base in Qatar.
In a post shared at just after 11pm UK time, Mr Trump said the first stage of the ceasefire would begin six hours later.
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Donald Trump in the Situation Room at the White House over the weekend
This means both countries could still launch strikes in the meantime – and soon after, Israel announced evacuation orders for two areas in Tehran.
A senior Iranian official told the Reuters news agency that Tehran has agreed to the ceasefire after being persuaded by Qatar.
Mr Trump wrote: “Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World.
“On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, ‘THE 12 DAY WAR.’
“This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will!”
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Iran’s nuclear capabilities
In an interview with Sky News’ partner network NBC, the president said it was a “great day” for the US and the Middle East – and a “wonderful day” for the world.
“I’m very happy to have been able to get the job done. A lot of people were dying and it was only going to get worse. It would have brought the whole Middle East down,” he said.
Mr Trump said he thinks the ceasefire is “unlimited” and is “going to go forever” – adding: “I don’t believe they will ever be shooting at each other again.”
Just hours earlier, people in the Qatari capital Doha had stopped and gazed up at the sky as Iranian missiles flew to the American al Udeid base and interceptors fired.
Officials said there were no casualties, and the US later confirmed it had been warned about the attack by Iran.
Mr Trump was in the Situation Room in the White House as the strikes took place.
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He later claimed on his social network that the missiles were a “very weak response”, which the US “expected” and “very effectively countered”.
The Iranian attack came after the US dropped “bunker buster bombs” on three key nuclear sites in Iran over the weekend.
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Iran releases video after attack on US base
In a new interview on Fox News, US Vice President JD Vance claimed Iran is no longer able to build nuclear weapons after the American attacks.
“Iran was very close to having a nuclear weapon,” he said. “Now Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon with the equipment they have because we destroyed it.”
The Pentagon briefing was big on what happened but short on detail of what happens next.
Neither defence secretary Pete Hegseth nor General Dan “Raisin” Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, can answer that.
Mr Hegseth called the bombing an “incredible and overwhelming success” with “focused and clear” instructions from President Trump.
The focus now is on what follows and that’s not so clear.
The briefing laid out the details of the military deception plan behind Operation Midnight Hammer.
B-2 stealth aircraft were flown west towards the Pacific on Saturday as a decoy, while the B-2s with bunker-busting bombs on board flew east towards Iran.
Israel-Iran live: World continues to react to US attack on nuclear facilities
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What is Operation ‘Midnight Hammer’?
Mr Hegseth called it a plan that took months and weeks of positioning and came down, in the end, to “precision, misdirection and operational security”.
Gen Caine, Mr Trump’s top military man, offered a measured assessment. While Mr Trump had spoken of Iran’s nuclear sites being “obliterated”, Gen Caine revised that downwards when he spoke of “extremely severe damage”.
Full battle damage assessment will reveal the complete picture – only then can the mission’s success be measured in full, mindful that Iran had shifted at least some of its enriched uranium in the days before the strike.
On the politics of it, Mr Hegseth said this wasn’t about regime change in Iran. It might offer precious little reassurance to Tehran, particularly as he also said part of the operation was to defend Israel and the ongoing defence of Israel.
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What next after US-Iran strikes?
If the US is tethered to Israel’s interests to the extent of an unprecedented attack on Iran, where does its influence end?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared almost giddy in response to the US attack. He is a PM strengthened by Mr Trump’s spectacular response to his rhetoric around Iran.
Suspicions weren’t softened around Netanyahu’s influence over Mr Trump when Mr Hegseth was asked about the basis for the attack. He has long lobbied the US president on Iran being close to building a nuclear bomb, contrary to American intelligence which indicates otherwise.
Mr Hegseth was asked what was the new intelligence, was it American or from other countries? He avoided a direct answer, saying only that Mr Trump had looked at all the intelligence information and concluded Iran was a threat.
There were a number of questions about what comes next, with an assortment of non-answers in response from Mr Hegseth.
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Starmer reacts to US strikes on Iran
Read more:
Iran may not have lost its ability to make a nuclear bomb
Iran may decide that killing Americans is the best way to retaliate
A consistent line was that the US wanted Iran to negotiate peace, coupled with the threat of further aggression if it doesn’t.
The US defence secretary said Washington was in touch with Tehran privately and publicly, giving it every opportunity to come to the table, every opportunity for peace.
He made the point that America hadn’t targeted Iranian troops or civilians – clearly, a measure by the US to limit response and leave open a door.
The Americans want this attack to have been a “one-and-done”.
The scenario it’s left with, however, is an Iran talking of a diplomatic door closed and sending its foreign minister travelling to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin.
Iran is wounded, no doubt. Combined attacks have left it degraded and, without a network of support in the Middle East, its ability to strike back is limited. For now, if not necessarily forever.
Donald Trump clearly enjoyed the sugar rush of military success but he will be wary of the come-down and all of its uncertainties.
In circumstances with world implications, he won’t be alone.
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