What the British government couldn’t accept then, and won’t acknowledge now, is that the most powerful leaders in Europe have long been Putin’s enablers. Of course, today the continent’s leaders are engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity, in an attempt to stop Russia invading Ukraine. But those close to the Russian Front are less than impressed. Commenting on Boris Johnson’s recent trip to Warsaw, Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki suggested that Western Europeans need to shed the belief that they will live in a 21st century “free of armed confrontation”. Russia’s Ukraine policy, he argues, is “for all its madness… painfully rational”. Putin is “effectively exploiting European weaknesses”.

And it’s not just that Europe had lulled itself into believing war in its neighbourhood is impossible. It has also, through its own hypocrisy, given Russia the perfect justification for waging it. Back when Western nations held all the cards, they didn’t always follow the international rules they imposed on others. Warnings to Putin about the fundamental evils of war may resonate with Western audiences, but they can ring hollow elsewhere, once leaders recall the US and UK-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, or the 2011 Nato-led military intervention in Libya — both of which had disastrous consequences for millions of people. The illegal former invasion, in particular, set a dangerous moral precedent — one warmongers worldwide will continue to exploit in the crucial battle of narratives.

Putin doesn’t need to convince Brits he’s right — especially as Britain has said it will not be sending troops to Ukraine in the event of an invasion. Still, he will be keeping a close eye on European opinion polls. A January survey in seven European nations showed a clear majority, 62%, believe Nato should defend Ukraine if it is invaded by Russia. That is a solid sign of European solidarity, considering Ukraine is not even a Nato member. But in a crisis, the true test of solidarity is always in how much pressure it can withstand.

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When presented with risk factors, European appetites for a direct confrontation with Russia reduce significantly. Among Germans, Fins, the French, Italians, Poles, Romanians and Swedes, only in Poland were most respondents willing to accept the risks of economic downturn, higher energy prices, cyber-attacks, a refugee crisis and Russian military aggression. Nowhere else was a majority willing to accept them. “People mainly seem to support sanctions that will hurt Russia but will not hurt them”, the report noted. This is crucial, for, as the survey’s authors pointed out: “today, geopolitical strength is determined not just by military and economic power but also by the capacity to endure pain”.

And after decades of enjoying safety and prosperity that’s virtually unmatched anywhere else in the world, the West’s pain threshold is low. Some may feel tempted to blame “generation snowflake” for this weakness. But, while young Fins, for instance, are indeed significantly less likely than older Fins to be willing to suffer to defend Ukraine, younger French and German citizens are more willing to make such sacrifices than older generations. This is no straightforward generational divide.

For Putin and his circle, who will be following such surveys (as will European governments), they are evidence of the weakness of modern-day Western societies who generally just want to be left alone to continue enjoying their high standards of living. Knowing that true democracies have to be governed by public opinion, Putin will likely see this risk aversion as encouragement to invade.

Still, it’s public opinion at home he’ll be most worried about. In raising the stakes so high, Putin has forced himself into a corner particularly dangerous for dictators. If he doesn’t see any of his major demands met and then doesn’t go through with any military action, Russians may start wondering what all the fuss was about. Did our tsar blink first and chicken out of a confrontation with the West? What exactly did Mother Russia get from all this? These are questions Putin can’t afford to have too many Russians asking. It will be difficult for him to explain away all the events of recent weeks — the troop movements and drills — as nothing more than Western “hysteria”, which is Russia’s current official line.

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Moreover, as he has now unambiguously displayed his intentions towards Ukraine, he will know that if he withdraws his troops now, Western nations — wary of making the same mistake twice — will likely invest significant resources into shoring up Ukraine’s defences. That would make the country more difficult to threaten in the future, let alone successfully invade. It’s no secret that Putin wants a 21st century, multi-ethnic empire, in which Ukrainians and Russians, who he describes as “one people”, will live side by side. Even if he was bluffing a month ago, and had no intention of actually invading, Putin might end up deciding that it’s now or never.

Of course, an attempt to conquer all of Ukraine would border on lunacy. It is the second-largest country in Europe — more than twice the size of the UK — and Putin’s antics have only galvanised Ukrainian nationalism. So trying to seize the whole territory would indeed be a “bloody business”, as Boris Johnson has suggested, especially as Ukraine has a history of effective guerrilla warfare dating back to the Second World War.

The prospect of a long conflict, costly in terms of both lives and money, is more likely to deter Putin than any attempt at appeasement. Yet even if Putin is dissuaded, Russia is not the only global power that could take advantage of the West’s weakness. The centre of economic gravity is shifting eastward. The seven largest emerging economies today — Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and Turkey — are projected to overtake the G7 in economic size during the 2030s. These countries want a much bigger say in how the world is run than they have today. Why wouldn’t they, one may ask.

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The only real question is how they will opt to expand their influence. Some will likely focus on peaceful means, but others will be tempted to use their increasing military power to shift the status quo in their favour. China, for one, is closely observing events in Ukraine. It came out in support of Russia, by saying it, too, opposes Nato expansion. And it will draw lessons from whatever happens on how to handle its own inevitable attempt to achieve Taiwanese “reunification” with China this century. Meanwhile, Nato member Turkey is on the side of the West in this particular conflict, supplying Ukraine its long-range armed drones, much to Russia’s displeasure. But it has shown on several occasions that it will go its own way militarily when it deems fit.

The Ukraine crisis, then, is not an anomalous conflict, but the beginning of a future for which Europe appears utterly unprepared. The continent has had it so good for so long, it has come to take everything it has for granted, including its security — which is gravely threatened by that very complacency. This century will test the West in ways it hasn’t been tested in a long time. It can only survive with the kind of fight it seems resolutely determined to avoid.

As soon as the President touched down at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk this week, he made it clear he was a man reborn. He was, he told US service personnel serving at the airbase, going to meet Vladimir Putin once the G7 wrapped up and “let him know what I want him to know”. Cue a great roar of approval from the servicemen stood behind him, and an even greater roar of approval from the US media.

Of course, if President Biden’s predecessor was still in office and had said something similar, he would no doubt have been accused of being “bellicose”; his words would be heralded up as proof that he lacked diplomatic skills and was at serious risk of starting World War III. But different presidency, different rules.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that President Biden should wish to be seen to be standing up against Vladimir Putin. After all, the Russian leader is an easy target for Western leaders hoping to display some clout.

The same cannot be said for Biden’s host country, which makes the US President’s recent broadside against Britain all the more perplexing. In the lead-up to today’s summit, Anglo-American relations were subjected to two contradictory developments. On the one hand, Biden and Boris Johnson met yesterday to sign a new Atlantic Charter, modelled on the historic statement agreed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1941. The contents of the Charter are typically vague, though the intent behind it is obvious: it is an attempt to breathe new life into the much-vaunted (by the British at least) “Special Relationship”.

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For Biden, the agreement also slots in nicely with his oft-repeated claim that “America is back” — as though it somehow disappeared from the world stage in the four years before he became President. Initiatives like this go some way to making it look like America is becoming a grown-up player again, deftly rebuilding important alliances that were allegedly damaged during the Trump era.

That may also explain the Biden administration’s second, more uncharacteristic incursion into British politics: the decision of the White House to instruct Yael Lempert — its most senior diplomat in the UK — to accuse Boris Johnson of imperilling the Irish peace process over Brexit.

It was, as Keir Starmer predictably acknowledged, an “unprecedented” outburst. But it also reflected an interestingly non-pragmatic side to the Biden administration; a side that is deeply ideological and seems willing to risk a diplomatic fallout in order to satisfy internal pressures within his party. For the warning, remarkable as it was, forms part of an ongoing and very curious set of misunderstandings which have taken hold at the very top of the Democratic Party.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is just one of a number of senior figures who in recent years has claimed that Britain’s decision to leave the EU risks upsetting the Good Friday Agreement. Only last September, she castigated Dominic Raab on the matter, warning: “If the UK violates its international agreements and Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a UK-US free trade agreement passing the Congress.”

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This view seems to get some of its impetus from the connection — in the minds of many US Democrats, at least — between the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump. But there is another reason why this strange ideological strand exists within the Democratic Party: the prevalence of a dogmatically pro-Irish reunification agenda.

For much of this century, administrations on both sides have tended to downplay this aspect of American politics — not least because in the wake of 9/11, George W Bush took a suitably strong line against the IRA and its political allies. But now, thanks to the misguided belief that Brexit could imperil the Good Friday Agreement, this ugly element of Democrat politics has returned.

This became clear almost exactly a year ago, when Chuck Schumer — the current Senate Majority leader — agreed to speak at an online conference organised by Sinn Fein; among the other speakers was Gerry Adams. In his remarks, Schumer boasted that while “the road to Irish unity” is “now more within reach today than at any time”.  He then went on to say: “I wish you the best in your critical efforts to build support for a truly united Ireland.”

Put to one side the fact that Schumer gave his approval to a political party that approves of terrorism. The fact that a senior American politician would publicly say that to anyone is, in itself, extraordinary; it’s like the Leader of the House of Commons wishing success to anyone in Texas who wants to break away from the United States.

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It seems, then, that Yael Lempert and Joe Biden are in good company. But while it is one thing for a US President to be bellicose with Vladimir Putin, it is quite another to do the same with a close ally who is acting on a decision ordered in a democratic referendum.

So for once, I suspect this year’s G7 summit won’t be remembered as yet another pointless gathering, garlanded with the usual soundbites about the rule of law and the importance of democracy. For while Joe Biden’s administration makes one set of noises about the promises of Anglo-American cooperation, its behaviour in the past week has revealed the opposite: that it views British democracy as a threat to its own ideological agenda.

He’s a little bit right. And so he proposed to invite Russia, India, South Korea and Australia too — as “guests”. This, he contends, would counter the might of China and might re-energise the group.

The first to complain was Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. He did not actually say he would boycott the summit if Russia attended, but he said there would have to be “many discussions” first. The UK was next. A spokesman for Boris Johnson conceded that it was customary for the host country to invite others to participate as guests and that the UK would “look at the detail of what the US is proposing”.

But our statement went on to say that the UK would not support Russia’s readmission to the G7, because there was “no evidence of changed behaviour”. In so saying, though, it went further than Donald Trump had done, because while he has in the past mooted the return of Russia to the G7, his latest proposal, to invite Russia as a guest, can be seen as an attempt to avoid the issue of whether Russia should be reinstated after its indefinite suspension over the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

And then the EU’s high representative, Josep Borrell, picked up the baton, saying that the format of the G7 was not for the summit chair to change. “The G7 cannot become G8… until Russia changes its course.”

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In fact, the G7 host does have the discretion to invite additional guests. But somewhere along the way, the distinction between Russia being invited as a guest and being reinstated as a full member has been lost. Not that Russia would necessarily even want to be reinstated at what used to be seen as — but is no longer — the world’s top table.

So why is Trump extending the guest list? To make the G7 meaningful again?

In fact, I think the go-it-alone, America-First, Donald Trump is on the look-out for, if not multilateral then glad-handing bilateral relationships with countries that could side with the US in trying to rein in China. Tired of the European olde worlde timidity and, like his immediate predecessors at the White House, entertaining the idea of that still incomplete ‘pivot’ to Asia, Trump is exploring ways to cope with an increasingly assertive Beijing. He knows that Australia, India and South Korea all have beef with China and that they are also casting around for some way of configuring the world in a way that better corresponds both to their own national needs and what they see as the needs of the wider Pacific region today.

Underlying at least some of this is a widespread dissatisfaction with the way existing multinational organisations have been working in recent years, highlighted by the perception that they have not exactly covered themselves in glory during the Covid pandemic. All sorts of international and internal power balances have been upset, exposing differences in the way individual countries responded and the varying success of the measures taken. Only a few, very different, countries — some of the Asian nations, starting with South Korea and Japan, and Germany in Europe — have distinguished themselves. No international grouping has proved in any way adequate to the emergency, let alone excelled.

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The WHO, for one, was hardly a commanding presence. So much so that even Trump noticed — and announced an end to US support. Similarly, the United Nations. It is true that in April António Guterres set up what he called the Secretary-General’s Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund, but the target budget, at US$2bn seems pitifully inadequate. Mr Guterres himself was hardly out and about promoting his project, at the very time when almost any attempt at a coordinated response would have been welcomed by many.

Nato helped with airlifting medical supplies, mostly within Europe — though the alliance hardly sang of its achievements from the rooftops either. Help was also delivered by countries on a bilateral basis, including US medical supplies for Russia and EU medical aid for Iran (a breach of sanctions to which the US turned a blind eye).

Given the scale of what had become a global health emergency, however, the fact is that there was a conspicuous gap where institutional leadership might have been. Every government’s priority was to protect its own; borders were closed from Australasia through much of Asia to Europe and on to the United States. This national turning inwards, however, in no way precluded a role for international initiatives and cooperation; there was just no one taking any credible lead.

Once, the world might have looked to the US for leadership. We certainly did during the Ebola and Aids epidemics. The United States was (eventually) at the forefront of the campaign, both medically and morally, to wipe out Aids; it was perfectly placed to lead. Ebola, moreover, was a largely regional epidemic in a part of the world where the US and the West in general had longstanding expertise they could apply.

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Coronavirus, however, reached the United States only after ravaging parts of Asia and Europe. When deaths were at their height in Spain and Italy, the US still barely acknowledged it might also have a problem. And when the virus started to make itself felt, the US — for all its wealth and advanced medical facilities — proved no better at handling it than most Europeans.

It was not just the late arrival of coronavirus on US shores, and prior US scepticism, however, that militated against US leadership. It was also that Trump has eschewed global leadership even more than his predecessor, Barack Obama — leaving an even more conspicuous vacuum.

The European Union, which had in the past presented itself a potential alternative pole of leadership, wasn’t up to the job. It regards health as a national issue, so pan-EU channels were undeveloped, and when desperate members begged for central help, the EU was barely able to organise itself.

Enter Gordon Brown, then, who wants to save the world again, as he claimed to during the 2008 financial crisis. Along with various other former leaders, he has tried to resurrect the joint effort they mounted through the G20 in 2008-9, calling for the G20 summit to be brought forward from November to consider a global approach to coronavirus.

But the main reason why the G20’s response to the financial crisis is seen as a success is that the group was not only able to agree a particular set of goals, but it incorporated governments with the power and the political will to do what was required. The extent to which even central governments, let alone an international body, could accomplish a similar feat in relation to very disparate health services is doubtful.

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There has also been a move by the UK, as it embarks upon life outside the EU, to form a grouping of major democracies — a D10, comprising the G7, plus India, South Korea and Australia — designed to cooperate in the first instance on technology so as to reduce dependence on China, but which could in the longer term grow into something more substantial.

The close resemblance between the proposed D10 and Donald Trump’s expanded G7 is not coincidental, but there is one key difference. The D10 is not only directed against China, but expressly excludes Russia. Pushing Russia into China’s arms — which could be a consequence — might not in the end work in democracy’s best interests.

The United Nations, for its part, is certainly too unwieldy to address a specific global emergency. The Commonwealth? When was the last time we heard of that? The WHO’s big success was the eradication of smallpox which was a long time ago and a long-term effort. It has not covered itself with glory during Covid.

If not the US, the EU, the UN or the WHO (for pandemics) or an expanded G7 or the G20 or a D10, then where is leadership in global emergencies to come from?

Maybe better to start from what has worked. Identifying and agreeing a set of goals is essential. The members of any group must have the power and the will to honour what is agreed. Inclusivity is another key. A grouping whose real purpose is to oppose China is not going to solve a China problem; similarly Russia or Iran.

The Helsinki Accords, signed in 1975 with the purpose of reducing Cold War tensions, illustrate how this strategy can bring change. The signatories included distinguished statesmen, but you will search in vain for a single leader. And maybe that is how it has to be. With the US bowing out and other actors with different agendas taking the stage, perhaps it is time to allow ad hoc groupings to take a more collegiate approach to a particular task in hand.

Perhaps that is what Trump is driving at with his proposal for an extended G7 this year? Could that help our post-Covid recovery? If only, the next generation might say, we had got our act together sooner.

It was quite a different scenario, though, the preceding week at the G7 meeting. Possibly this is because Trump is far better at focusing on the single issue and the single opponent, and far less able to deal with multi-faceted issues and disparate “opponents”. And it’s also possible that the G7 spat was, in part, an invention to signal to Kim Jong-un that this Mr President was not to be messed with.

But let’s not forget how easy it is easy for heads of government, European heads in particular, collectively to upset US presidents. Anything that smacks of Minerva speaking to Mars sparks the tinder, particularly if from the British, for it harks back to colonial days: “These country clowns cannot whip us”, said Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the America Department, unhelpfully (and inaccurately) in 1775. 

Their jokes don’t help much either. Back in 1919, at the peace conference at Versailles, President Woodrow Wilson, notoriously stiff and vain, was still smarting about a joke made by a British diplomat in Washington that had done the rounds a couple of years earlier and he had somehow got wind of. Wilson, a widower, had recently remarried. “What did the new Mrs. Wilson do when the President proposed?” ran the gag. Answer: “She fell out of bed with surprise.” 

The same sort of joke at the First Lady’s expense today would send Donald Trump ballistic on Twitter, as many of the jokes against him do. I suspect, however, that has a much thicker skin than he is given credit for – far thicker than the prissy Wilson had. Yet Trump kicks against the pricks. He does it partly as a way of batting away the constant ad hominem insults. But also, I think, for sport. Remember that his 11th rule of deal-making is to “Have fun”. Perhaps that is, in part, what he was up to in Quebec. 

You can see this attitude, too, in Trump’s selective and arch quoting of history. He told the New York Times that the reason for the failure of Bonaparte’s Russian campaign of 1812 was that “he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death”. This, I think, says more about Trump’s contempt for the NYT and his cavalier attitude generally, than of his actual knowledge.

Trump will, at least, share the received wisdom when it comes to America’s involvement in the two world wars. He will know about Wilson’s great expectations on going to the Versailles peace conference at the end of the First World War, and how he was worn down by the “perfidy” of the major allies and the tiresomeness of the minor ones. But above all, Trump will know of the ultimate failure of Wilson’s big idea – the League of Nations.

The comparisons between Quebec and Versailles are indeed striking, although the views of the president and the other principals on a rules-based international order were reversed. In the same way that the leaders of the G7 were already discomposed by Trump’s unilateralism on tariffs and trade, in 1919 the British, French and Italian prime minsters – Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando – were wary of Wilson’s high-minded intentions to impose a new world order.

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Wilson had first tried to broker a peace in 1916 when the Germans made a wholly disingenuous proposal for a negotiated settlement, which both the British and French peremptorily rejected. Then, when the US entered the war in April 1917, Wilson began working on a set of war aims which he promoted as a way to permanent peace rather than simply a new balance of power. In January 1918, Wilson announced his war aims to Congress, his famous “Fourteen Points”, the most important of which – to Wilson at least – being the final one: “A general association of nations to be formed to guarantee to its members political independence and territorial integrity” – the League of Nations.

The European allies were at once sceptical and anxious. There was, for a start, no mention of reparations. Consequently, at Versailles a year later, with Wilson sticking to his Fourteen Points agenda, the proceedings were far from smooth. Unlike the G7 at Quebec, though, where Trump repudiated the message of the final communiqué underlining “a rules-based international order”, at Versailles it was the Europeans who were least interested in a rules-based League of Nations. They went along with it chiefly to get Wilson’s support for their own demands on reparations and redrawing the maps.

Because of Wilson’s high-minded obsession with rules, however, he failed to see the reality of a far-from peaceful Europe. In consequence, the treaty with Germany was on the one hand too harsh and on the other too lenient, giving the new Weimar Republic both cause for brooding and scope for revanchism.

But the real blow came when Wilson returned to Washington in July 1919 and found that the Senate would not back American participation in the League of Nations. Republicans and some Democrats dismissed it as “Colonel” House’s crazy idea (House had been Wilson’s envoy since before the war and was hugely influential on his thinking) nicknaming Wilson “the Jack that House built”.

While you might think Trump and the prissy Presbyterian former president of Princeton University couldn’t be more different, there are in fact striking similarities in how they conduct their affairs. “Colonel” House said that Wilson was only receptive to other perspectives while in the process of making a decision. Once he’d made that decision, it was immutable, no longer open to discussion by anyone. While some admired that as decisiveness, others believed it to be egotism of the most dangerous kind. At Versailles, one French diplomat said that Wilson would have made a great tyrant, in that he had no concept at all that he could ever be wrong. 

Trump will know of Wilson’s humiliating failure to get his prize Versailles project approved by Congress, for it is a keystone of American history. He will also know that in addition to this, Wilson’s failure to anticipate the possibility of German revanchism – ending up with peace terms that both fuelled yet could not contain German resentment – was a huge contributory factor in the rise of Hitler. It was why FDR was so adamant on the unconditional surrender of the Germans and Japanese, rather than a negotiated peace – another tenet of American history.

Trump’s historical instinct will, therefore, be to despise rules-based arrangements, which to him smack of mere process. (For that, indeed, was what the Senate saw in the League – process – and what the terms negotiated with Germany turned out to be). Add to that, American presidential wariness (to say the least) of heads of other governments acting collectively in their own individual interests – interests that appear to be rooted in the past (and a failed past at that) – and you get an ugly scene like Quebec.

And yet, with an infinitely more lethal problem such as North Korea’s nuclear weapons, Trump will feel on surer ground. Yes, he’s traded insults with Kim Jong-un, but public name-calling, however unedifying, is less insidious than backstairs sneering. We, the rest of the G7, should stop worrying that Trump’s behaviour in Quebec means he doesn’t understand international relations. On the contrary: it suggests that, like FDR, he has taken on board the lessons of Versailles, and that process is not enough. Only results count.

If Kim Jong-un reads history and Trump at Quebec correctly, he will know that Singapore cannot be just another North Korean bluff. If he doesn’t, there will be no peace in our time, and a tyrant’s end for “The Supreme Leader”.

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