By Kyle Matthews

June 15, 2025

As Canada hosts the G7 summit, the world stands at a precipice. The rules-based international order is fraying. Alliances are under pressure. Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, and the Middle East faces an unprecedented war between Israel and Iran.

Since Donald Trump’s second presidency started in January of this year, a rapid transformation has occurred. Trump’s assaults on status-quo trade practices, military alignments, and geopolitical affiliations have provoked a defensive fragmentation. The post-Cold War order is giving way to a world defined less by cooperation and more by competition, coercion, and chaos.

The G7, once a bastion of democratic unity and economic power, now convenes under a darkening sky, as the very values and institutions it represents and support come under threat — not just from authoritarian challengers like Russia and China, but from within.

Canada must use this moment to lead strategically. It must work with like-minded democracies to prevent further disintegration of the transatlantic alliance, shore up NATO, defend free trade, and push back against the dangerous illusion of “spheres of influence” promoted by Moscow and Beijing.

Winston Churchill once quipped, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” That quote has never felt more relevant. Allies today bicker over burden-sharing and tariffs, but the alternative — facing this fractured world alone — is far worse. The lesson of the 20th century is that democracies must stick together or fall separately.

At this year’s GLOBSEC Forum in Prague, the President of the Czech Republic, Piotr Pavel, issued a stark warning. Russia, he said, is not just fighting in Ukraine — it is attempting to re-establish the Soviet empire, embracing a revanchist vision of spheres of influence that denies smaller nations their sovereignty. His call was unambiguous: invest in deterrence, strengthen our militaries, and preserve our way of life before it is too late. Like all those in Eastern Europe who were colonized and occupied by the Soviet Union, the Czechs know what’s at stake.

The Kananaskis G7 must address the prospect that the fragmentation Trump has provoked and rationalized — in defence, in trade, in global governance — is not a permanent condition but a transitional one. The question is: what will follow it?

Fragmentation must be confronted head-on, and Canada has a unique role to play as both a bridge-builder and a warning bell. We are not a great power, but we are a consequential one.

Will we be able to push back against the emerging authoritarian order, backed by military aggression, digital repression, and economic coercion? Or can the world’s democracies shape a new, more resilient system — more inclusive, more adaptive, but still anchored in the values of human rights, the rule of law, and multilateral cooperation?

That answer hinges, in part, on how the G7 responds now. Fragmentation must be confronted head-on, and Canada has a unique role to play as both a bridge-builder and a warning bell. We are not a great power, but we are a consequential one. We can convene, we can coordinate, and we can lead with moral clarity.

This means reinforcing NATO — not just in words but in real capabilities. It means deepening economic ties among democracies while countering the weaponization of trade by authoritarian states. It means defending the principle that borders are not open to revision by force, as Russia seeks to do in Ukraine. And it means standing firm against China’s escalating belligerence towards Taiwan, which risks spiraling into a conflict that could draw in not just the United States, but also Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia.

This G7 meeting will once again demonstrate what we already know, which is that Trump is not a traditional isolationist, but rather a transactional nationalist, who is more than willing to upend long-standing alliances for short-term gain or personal grievance. His version of “Make America Great Again” is not about restoring the liberal order but about dismantling it in favor of a zero-sum worldview where power replaces principle.

In the first five months since resuming power in his new role as a fragmentation catalyst, Trump has targeted the multilateral system by cutting funding to the United Nations, derided NATO members, threatened the sovereignty of Canada and Denmark, imposed tariffs on allies, and openly sided with Russia over Ukraine, despite America’s post-Cold war commitment, entrenched in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Trump’s unpredictability has become a force multiplier for global instability.

Canada faces a challenge of historic proportions. It must work with like-minded G7 members and other allies to build structures of resilience in the face of Trump’s systemic assault — by diversifying security arrangements, reinforcing trade linkages with Europe and Asia, and building coalitions of willing democracies that can act even when Washington wavers.

To do otherwise would be to repeat the mistakes of history. As the ancient Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero once warned, “Do not blame Caesar. Blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom.” The price of complacency is not just the loss of American leadership—but the collapse of the democratic order it once upheld.

The liberal international order that emerged out of the ashes of the Second World War is not perfect. But it is worth defending and preserving. And the G7 Summit remains one of the last forums where the world’s major democracies can set a collective agenda. This year’s summit must be more than a photo op — it must be a rallying point for resisting the forces of fragmentation and laying the groundwork for what comes next.

It is our responsibility to shape the world we want to live in. Because if we fail to fight fragmentation now, we may one day find ourselves fighting without allies at all.

Kyle Matthews is Executive Director of the Montreal Institute for Global Security.