G7 summit: what for?

2015 G7 summit at Schloss Elmau, Germany. (Source: EC - Audiovisual Service, Pierre Teyssot © European Union 2015)

Next Thursday and Friday the leaders of the G7 (US, UK, France, Japan, Germany, Canada and Italy) will meet in Ise-Shima, Japan. But will this summit actually matter or is it just another archaic piece of an international system that is so often put in question these days? I will review both the official agenda and the underlying issues to try to make sense of the summit and its larger repercussions.

Europe, are you ready for prime time?

President Barack Obama meets with Eurozone leaders on the Laurel Cabin patio during the G8 Summit at Camp David, Maryland, May 19, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Will the EU need to build a retreat in the outskirts of Brussels to convene informal summits with world powers?

The primary season for the 2016 presidential election in the United States is drawing to a close. And despite primaries in some states (such as California or New Mexico) are still a few weeks away, there is already a de facto candidate from the Republican Pary, Donald J. Trump.

In this article I won't discuss about the possibilities of a Trump White House versus either Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, some kind of trick from the Republican establishment (people like Paul Ryan, John Kasich or Mitt Rommey) to force a second vote in the National Convention (in which delegates' vote is free); or an eleventh-hour independent candidate. On the contrary, it is about the effects of a possible Trump administration for US leadership and the European Union.

This article isn't a thorough analysis about Trump's ideas on foreign policy either. Rather, I argue that at least during the first couple of years of a Trump administration, regardless of the actual policies he would pursue, the perception created about him internationally would have big enough an impact in the role the United States plays in the world which may leave the European Union as the actual "leader of the free world".