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Does the West Still Exist? Reflections on the NATO and G7 Summits
Thu, June 26th, 2025
Live Online
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Solidarity among advanced market democracies, collectively known as “the West,” has underpinned the post-1945 liberal international order. Those foundations, already eroding, are now crumbling. Under President Donald J. Trump, the United States has abandoned aspirations to international leadership and is charting an “America First” course that promises to upend longstanding alliances, multilateral institutions, and commercial arrangements. With America no longer seeking to anchor world order, its closest partners are feeling unmoored. “The West as we know it is dead,” declares Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.
What are the roots of this growing estrangement, and how is it expressing itself? How is the fragmentation of the West shaping NATO, the G7, and U.S.-EU relations? What strategies are America’s erstwhile allies and partners adopting to hedge (or even balance) against an unpredictable United States? As America retrenches, what openings might arise for other Western and non-Western powers to advance their visions and preferences for multilateral institutions, international cooperation, and global order?
Join Stewart Patrick in conversation with Rosa Balfour and Sophia Besch of the Carnegie Endowment and Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute as they unpack the recent NATO and G7 summits—and what they tell us about the fate of the West.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
Event Speakers
Rosa Balfour
Director, Carnegie Europe
Rosa Balfour is the director of Carnegie Europe. Her fields of expertise include European politics, institutions, and foreign and security policy.
Sophia Besch
Senior Fellow, Europe Program
Sophia Besch is a senior fellow in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on European foreign and defense policy.
Stewart Patrick
Senior Fellow and Director, Global Order and Institutions Program
Stewart Patrick is a senior fellow and director of the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary areas of research focus are the shifting foundations of world order, the future of American internationalism, and the requirements for effective multilateral cooperation on transnational challenges.
Kori Schake
Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Kori Schake leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony and a contributing writer at the Atlantic, War on the Rocks, and Bloomberg.