G-7 debacle proves Trump operating on different map

Michael Gerson BERLIN — It is strange being in a foreign country and watching American postWorld War II leadership — as practiced by presidents such as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan — collapse into a heap of chaos, ignorance and self-indulgence.

Donald Trump’s performance at the G-7 in Quebec — his personal attacks on other leaders, his tariff threats against close allies, his rejection of the joint communique via Twitter — will strike most Americans as just another day at the office for the great disrupter. For Europeans, it was a demonstration that the seedy, derelict carnival of Trumpism is not just a show put on for Trump’s political base. Or more accurately: Everything Trump does is a seedy, derelict carnival put on for his political base.

What did the alternative communique convey? That the American president has a level of open animosity toward Canada, France and Germany unlike anything we’ve seen in the modern era. That the American foreign-policy process should be treated as a joke. That the traditional leader of the West no longer understands the concept of “the West.”

To be an American in Germany these days is to be besieged by questions about the intentions of America’s president. Germany is a country — because of a unique and horrible history — that provides leadership by standing for a rulesbased global order. Since power proved so dangerous, it must be replaced by process. This worldview is especially threatened by Trump’s comfort with chaos and rule by impulse.

During the first year of the Trump administration, it was possible to assure concerned foreigners that the president was being constrained by responsible advisers. He did not dissolve NATO, or abandon NAFTA, or bug out of Afghanistan. But now we are seeing Trump unbound: a president confident in his own damaged instincts, untethered from reality.

So, if encouragement is no longer possible, what about (in good German fashion) a little schadenfreude? No doubt, Americans can be a bit much to take. When Woodrow Wilson came to save Europe with his 14 Points for Peace, the French prime minister complained that God himself had only 10 commandments.

But is post-exceptionalism America really more desirable? The Trump administration has moved toward a more Putin-like foreign policy: oriented toward narrow economic and security interests, dismissive of human rights and humanitarian concerns and tilted toward the cultivation of favorable despots.

One effect of this shift away from idealism and universalism is the loss of certain universal ideals that helped bind the Atlantic alliance. The Atlantic Charter, authored by FDR and Winston Churchill, was not just a statement of national war aims but of international commitments — to economic collaboration, self-government and a “wider and permanent system of general security.” These vows are what turned resistance to Soviet aggression from a necessity into a cause.

This is perhaps the largest foreign policy crisis of our time: an American president who has lost the ability to distinguish friends from enemies.

America has had weak leaders before. But since World War II, every president has mentally located his country in the free world, bound by democratic values, trade and common purpose. Trump is operating on a different map. He is actively hostile to the internationalism that defined the western alliance.