The Washington Post reports:

When President Donald Trump arrives on the shores of Lake Geneva for this week’s Group of Seven summit, he will find America’s closest allies in a new posture: increasingly willing to tell him no.

After years of tariff threats, diplomatic whiplash and public confrontations, many world leaders have concluded that Trump is not an interruption to the international order but a feature of it — a reordering likely to endure regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. Rather than simply accommodating Trump, they are increasingly preparing for a future in which the U.S. is a less predictable partner and Europe is less inclined to follow America’s lead.

The shift will hang over the summit, which begins today as fallout over the Iran war continues to jolt the global economy, altering energy markets and raising fears of renewed inflation even as Trump on Sunday announced an end to hostilities. Trump will arrive seeking evidence that his disruptive approach to diplomacy is producing results — that allies are adapting to American priorities on trade, artificial intelligence, security and China. Many of the leaders gathering here share some of America’s broader goals, but they are also increasingly willing to resist U.S. pressure.

“Europe is in a fundamentally different place than it was a few years ago,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There are political limits now to simply accommodating every demand from Washington.”

The United States remains the indispensable military power in the Western alliance, providing the nuclear umbrella, intelligence capabilities and much of NATO’s logistical backbone. But an increasing number of leaders are exploring what a world looks like when America is no longer willing — or no longer expected — to lead every international response. [Continue reading…]