Leaders seek US reassurance in G20 meet

Foreign ministers from most of the world’s leading powers are heading to a diplomatic summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging economies in Germany, with all eyes on the new US. Secretary of State for clues about the direction Washington will take over the next four years.

At the talks Thursday and Friday in the western city of Bonn, US allies are seeking reassurances from Rex Tillerson that the administration of US President Donald Trump won’t ditch a decade of close cooperation among G-20 nations on climate change, international development and the global economy.

Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, meanwhile, are looking to gauge the man they’ll be dealing with on some of the more sensitive areas of foreign policy in the coming years--including conflicts in Syr- ia and Ukraine, territorial disputes in the South China Sea and nuclear disarmament.

“The issue for any country that’s not America is to try and flesh out what Trump means by ‘America first,’” said Christopher Smart, a fellow at the Chatham House think tank and former Obama administration adviser on international economic affairs.

A shift away from multilateral diplomacy could see US allies pitted against each other in a bid for Washington’s attention, opening up new battle lines. At the same time, smaller countries could be left to pick up the cost of financing international organizations—as well as the burden of behind-the-scenes negotiations—previously shouldered largely by the State Department.

So far, Tillerson has struck a more moderate tone than Trump, suggesting a desire for continuity rather than a radical break with the past, Smart said. How that will work in practice, and who genuinely has the new president’s ear, is something diplomats will be trying to find out in the summit’s working sessions.