>> In almost every way, Americans understand that being involved in the world is no longer just a luxury.

It's something we have to do for our own national interest.

And that's how you got to sell this.

♪♪ >> Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today's topic, Biden hits the road with his aviators.

The U.S. president just wrapped his first international trip.

How'd it go?

Did the G7 and NATO performances do enough to repair relationships badly strained during Trump and yeah, even Obama administrations?

And what happens next on big issues like vaccine distribution?

We all need them.

U.S.-China relations, two most powerful countries in the world, and climate change only getting worse.

I'm talking to Ivo Daalder.

He's president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and author of "The Empty Throne: America's Abdication of Global Leadership."

Later, the greatest hits of the Group of Seven.

Don't worry.

I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> We want a stable and predictable relationship here.

>> Yes, yes, I agree.

[ Barks ] >> But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> The United States is back.

America is back.

Ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.

Once again sit at the head of the table.

>> That's assuming the world has been saving that seat for America.

If the United States is really back, as President Biden keeps saying, what's it back to do?

That was one of the biggest questions at the G7 summit in the United Kingdom last weekend, the first stop on the first trip abroad of Biden's presidency.

After not meeting at all last year because, you know, pandemic and zero global leadership, the group, which includes these countries, plus representatives from the European Union, gathered in a tiny seaside town with the hopes of tackling the world's biggest problems in the flesh without masks, sometimes even touching.

[ Alarms blare ] And right now, what's the world's biggest problem, you ask?

Well, look no further than one of the hotels that hosted a G7 delegation.

This should tell you pretty much everything you need to know.

The World Health Organization's director-general said this meeting could end up being the group's most important to date and called on leaders to do more to help end the pandemic.

And they've listened.

A little.

G7 countries pledged to donate one billion doses of the vaccine to COVAX, 500 million of those coming from the United States.

The U.N. secretary-general, Antonio Gutierrez, says this is not enough and called for a more detailed plan from the world's most developed economies.

Another area of coordination -- taxes.

G7 leaders have said they want to stop big multinational corporations from avoiding their fair share.

It needs to get ratified by individual governments.

Going to take years and years, but they're steering the ship.

Topic of climate change also came up with the group agreeing to stop international financing of coal projects -- first time that's happened -- in an effort to limit global temperature rise to under 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.

That target still unrealistic, but it's progress.

China and Russia, yeah, they were on the agenda, too, but Europe and the Americans have yet to agree on how big a threat China actually is.

With Russia, there's more consensus.

Let's just say Putin's not getting an invite back into that club anytime soon.

Biden's trip went better than Trump's last big outing, to be sure.

In 2019, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson all still there this last week were caught on a hot mike laughing at President Trump's expense.

The moment was even parodied on "Saturday Night Live."

>> Oh, hey, guys, is this seat taken?

>> Uh, sorry, actually, it is.

>> Uh, yes, we would love to see you talk and chew at the same time, but we promised this seat to a friend.

>> While improving ties with allies is a priority for Biden, restoring the world's faith in American values is a heavier lift.

Can the United States reclaim that seat at the head of the table that Biden talked about?

Or is it good enough to be just invited to the party?

Ivo Daalder -- he's former U.S. ambassador to NATO, has a long history of working closely with America's allies.

Here's our conversation.

Great to see you, Ivo.

>> Hey, Ian, great to be here.

>> When we have come out of this period where all of America's allies have expressed so much uncertainty about the role the United States can, should play in the world, the sustainability of the alliances, all of these things, how is it possible that we have the French president Macron saying, "Yep, America's back"?

Yep, that's right.

How's that possible?

>> Well, in part because they want America to be back and wish is their command.

They want a United States that's engaged.

They want a United States that cares, even loves Europe, that thinks that Europe is important.

They want a United States that's there to be on the global stage to enhance themselves.

They want a United States that figures out how to deal with some of the big challenges that they themselves are unwilling or unable to deal with.

So in that sense, they're just happy that America is back.

But America is also back.

I mean, it's a reality.

It's not just about what they want in the very important sense that this president returns the United States, to the kind of engagement that used to be the norm and was the norm for a very long period of time, no matter how many disagreements one might have had between George W. Bush and the Clinton or Obama administrations.

And by the way, there were a lot of disagreements.

The fact that the United States had a indispensable role, a leading role in the world, was never questioned until Donald Trump was president.

And Biden comes from a generation, comes from a sense and an engagement sense that says, no, that's the role we need to take.

Now, the real question, right, is how long is that United States going to be back rather than a Trumpian United States?

And I think also the other question is, is the kind of way the United States has engaged the world still the appropriate way for dealing with the challenge we have?

But back?

Yeah, for sure.

>> And I mean, we'll get to both of those things.

But I mean, if you want to ask how much of this is about Biden being president, someone that they know, they're comfortable with, he's multilateral in orientation, he likes diplomacy, I mean, his team is oriented that way, and how much of this is the Russians increasingly antagonizing, under Putin, a lot of American allies?

How much of this is the Chinese increasingly antagonizing a lot of the allies?

If you had to balance those things, how would you score it?

>> Well, it's not an either/or.

It's an "and," right?

It is, from a geopolitical realism, foreign policy perspective.

The national interest of the countries in Europe is being threatened directly by what Russia is doing directly in terms of military force and the capabilities they have acquired over the last decade plus, the willingness to use that force, threatened by cyber intrusions, threatened by disruptive behavior with regard to electoral systems, on gas, on so many other ways, and, of course, threatened by the Chinese, threatened ideologically, threatened politically, threatened economically, and indeed increasingly threatened militarily.

The Chinese are in Europe.

You know, China may not be in Europe, but the Chinese are through the Belt and Road Initiative, through a whole variety of ways in which they have economic and political linkages created to NATO members, including members like Italy and Greece.

>> And they've been welcomed.

The Chinese have been welcomed by those European members.

>> Exactly.

So they're very much part of this.

And there is an interest to say, "Okay, we want to engage with them, but we also want to make sure that our own interests are protected, and we need the United States for that purpose.

We need a counterbalance.

We need a balance of power that, in fact, favors us over those two challenges" that they face, and they can't do it by themselves, no matter how much they want to talk about European sovereignty or strategic autonomy.

The reality is the United States, if it's willing to be part of it, should be part of that equation.

And they want the United States.

And at the same time, Biden is the most Atlanticist president since at least George H.W.

Bush.

Tony Blinken is the most Atlanticist Secretary of State.

>> Explain for our audience, since that's a super-wonky term when you say "Atlanticist," concretely, what does that mean for you?

>> So it means that in the core of your thinking about the way America engages, looking across the Atlantic and looking towards partnerships with Europeans is kind of your first natural instinct.

A problem arises.

And who do you call?

Are you going to call your friends in Latin America or in Africa or in the Middle East or even in Asia?

Or are you going to call your friends in Europe?

And the Atlanticist instinct, this instinct to think about how the United States and Europe together, the "we" in some ways is now in the Oval Office and back on the seventh floor in Foggy Bottom.

>> I certainly agree with you on Secretary of State Blinken.

Let me push back at least a little bit when we talk about Biden.

I mean, first invitation to the White House -- Japanese Prime Minister Suga, second invitation -- South Korean President Moon.

I mean, the Quad, something they're trying to stand up.

China's seen as the top priority, not Russia.

I mean, how much do you really want to lean into that?

>> So, it's where I think Biden and Blinken, by the way, and Sullivan and everyone else, the team is understanding that it's no longer enough to be Atlanticist.

You can't do your entire foreign policy engagement only with Europe.

What you really need is you need a North American, Asian, European advanced democratic alignment.

So you want to bring in your Asian allies.

You want to bring in your European allies and, of course, the Canadians and the United States in order to solve these issues.

You kind of want to enlarge the G7, right?

It was the right thing to do for Biden is to reach out to our Asian partners to bring Suga and Moon to the White House, as you said, for Austin, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State Blinken, to make their first trip to Japan and Korea and to have this meeting of the Quad -- India, Australia, Japan and the United States -- at the first level, at a leader level to have that kind of cooperation.

But it's not an alternative to Europe.

This president is not pivoting away from Europe.

It's trying to align both of our European partnerships and our Asian partnerships to deal with the challenges we face -- China, cyber, climate COVID -- to take four C's as the key thing.

>> How do you think you avoid ending up in a Cold War with the Chinese, given this level of momentum that is being driven by Biden, but frankly, in a bipartisan way in the United States?

>> Yeah, I think it's a real challenge because the United States doesn't do foreign policy subtly.

We're not particularly good at that, even though I think Biden's understanding and Blinken's understanding of the challenge that China poses is not in Cold War terms.

It's not an either/or.

In many ways, there is a severe need to compete.

But you compete by doing more ourselves, by working together on the strengths that we have, which are partners and allies around the world.

We've got 55 allies, the United States, and China has one -- North Korea.

Good luck trying to compete effectively if we can bring those 55 allies along in the competition.

But it's not about confrontation.

It's not about conflict.

It's not a zero-sum game.

You need to find ways to cooperate with the Chinese.

You heard Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who's made a strong stance against China, say in Brussels this week, "No one around this table wants a Cold War."

I think that's true for Joe Biden as well.

>> And you mentioned early on that there is a big unknown on the part of allies as to what extent the United States' commitment to these things is sustainable.

I mean, it flagged under the Trump administration, but it also flags inside Congress.

How much of a constraint is that?

>> So, first of all, when it comes to NATO, right, as an institution, both public and congressional support remains extremely high even during the Trump years, overwhelming majorities and unanimity in almost all cases, except I think one voted to say that U.S. membership of NATO wasn't a fundamental security interest of the United States.

So it's there, but it's flailing, right?

It's changing and the nature is changing.

This is the big bet.

And I think Biden has kind of understood this.

We have to demonstrate that a continuing global engagement by the United States and working together with other democracies can demonstrate to our own people that that delivers in a way that the alternatives don't, that delivers for them.

That's why I think the kind of economic policies that the Biden administration is putting forward, not in their specific, but in its overarching sense, that coordinating on the economic recovery, which they agreed in the G7 to continue to do, including fiscal expansionism as part of that and monetary expansionism as part of that, that a new tax regime that lays a minimum level of corporate taxation globally is all necessary.

So you can start providing for the folks back home to understand that cooperation with our friends and allies around the world, our democratic friends and allies around the world, has real tangible benefit for the average American.

I think it's worth trying to make it happen, because the alternative, I think, is exactly as you say.

It's to say, wait a minute, this costs too much.

Why are we doing this?

Why don't we turn our backs to the world?

We can worry about what people, you know -- we need to worry about what people at home are doing, not we're worried what people abroad are doing, that that kind of change will continue.

But we need that kind of investment in in this kind of idea of how cooperation among democracies delivers for the people who live in democracies much better than autocracies can.

In the normal conversation with the average folks here in Chicago and in the Midwest, most of them get it.

Most of them understand that you can't defend yourselves by building higher walls with and closing all the gates and having more guns at your border.

Because what's happening economically, what's happening in terms of health and climate, in terms of migration patterns that come with it, means that if the problems over there aren't addressed, they're inevitably going to come over here.

In some ways, the pandemic has helped in an unfortunate way.

It's like oxygen.

You know, you don't know how much you miss it until it's no longer there.

Right?

And so the pandemic and the fact that we are related to the rest of the world brought home to people that we need to be engaged to deal with the problems that are abroad in order to defend ourselves at home.

We've just seen this, I think, with vaccines.

Yes, it was very important for Americans to get the vaccines that are being produced here as quickly as possible.

But increasingly, people are understanding that vaccinating the rest of the world is important so no new variants will emerge that can defeat the vaccines that we're relying on to go back to our normal life.

So we need to vaccinate the rest of the world.

>> I mean, it is interesting that for all of the politicization of things like U.S. dues to the United Nations and support for NATO, there was no pushback from either side of the political spectrum in the U.S. when Biden announced that 500 million vaccines were going to be donated to poor countries around the world.

And that clearly is a reason for optimism.

>> Yeah, no, I think so.

And, you know, the council, the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, we've been doing opinion polling for almost 50 years to ask Americans what they think about America's role in the world.

And that polling has consistently demonstrated that on the question of whether the United States should play an active role in world affairs or stay out of world affairs, two thirds of Americans think we should play an active role.

Now, you can then define what that active role means.

And we've tried to do that.

But in almost every way, Americans understand that being involved in the world is no longer just a luxury.

It's something we have to do for our own national interest.

And that's how you got to sell this.

That's why a foreign policy for the middle classes is actually a pretty good slogan when you think about it, because it's trying to sell engagement, being part of the world, solving problems together with your friends and partners around the world as a means to helping you achieve what you want every day, which is to have a good job that pays enough.

>> I have not asked you much about Russia, mostly because the G7 and NATO are much more important and China than what we're talking about with Russia.

And it gets way too much airtime.

But briefly, how surprised have you been that the Biden administration has been focusing so much on predictability and finding areas where the Americans and Russians might be able to work together?

>> You know, in some ways, of course, it is very surprising that you've seen this outreach because Biden in some ways was the most skeptical president about both Russia and Vladimir Putin of any post-Cold War president from Bill Clinton onwards to come to office.

But on the other side, it's not that.

It's understandable.

Part of being back is understanding that you need to deal with security threats, not just through bigger budgets on the military side and more deterrence, but also dialogue and, where possible, arms control and cooperation on the kinds of issues that could really, really change the world very, very quickly.

And the arms control framework that was built up from from President Johnson and Nixon onwards is unraveling.

It's been starting to unravel for quite a while.

But Trump really pulled all the threads in one go with treaty after treaty walking away.

So the first thing he does, and I think rightly so, says let's take the new START agreement and extend that for five years.

And now let's spend some time seeing is there a way to build predictability and stability in this relationship?

You know, nuclear weapons still exist and no one -- no one wants to have a war in which those weapons would ever be used.

>> Ivo Daalder.

He runs the Chicago Council.

And I'm delighted to have him on the show.

Thanks so much.

>> Hey, Ian, it's great to talk to you as ever.

Thanks.

>> President Biden's first G7 summit as America's president also marks the first time those world leaders have gathered in person since the start of the COVID pandemic.

Want to know a little more about the group and why it exists in the first place?

You came to the right show.

It's called "GZERO," after all.

The G7 actually began as the G6.

How do you like that?

When the leaders of France, West Germany at that point, the USA, Japan, the U.K. and Italy met in a château outside of Paris to squabble their way out of an oil shock and financial crisis, they had so much fun, they agreed to do it every year.

They even let Canada join the party in 1976, which was surely a mistake, making it the G7.

But in the 1980s, Cold War politics took over and the focus shifted eastward to Tehran and Moscow.

Longstanding conflicts between Iran and Iraq turned into all-out war.

And a Soviet boondoggle in Afghanistan captured the group's attention.

The G7 became defined as much by what it stood against -- communism, authoritarianism -- as what it stood for.

After the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s, a newly humbled Russia got the invite and joined.

Which made it the G8 for a while, but you knew that wasn't going to last.

In 2014, with President Putin's decision to invade Crimea, the other seven said, "Do svidaniya."

[ Speaking Russian ] Yeah, I speak Kremlin.

In the years since, internal divisions and the rise of alternative institutions such as the G20 have led the world to question the G7's relevance, even though it still represents around 40% of global GDP, but only 10% of the world's population.

And we know that's not sustainable.

Oh, and there's China, which has never been a part of the G7, whose rise poses an economic, ideological, and security challenge to the group.

But as we've told you, this recent summit will surely be one of the most important and how they handle the converging crises, as President Biden has said, of vaccine distribution, economic recovery and climate change will be the test of whether the G7 matters, especially in our G-Zero world.

And now it's time for "Puppet Regime."

Today, President Biden finally gets his meeting with famous strongman Vladimir Putin.

And it turns out to be a joke.

Roll that tape!

>> Okay, now, Vladimir, like I said, no malarkey.

We want a stable and predictable relationship here.

>> Yes.

Yes, I agree.

And I was just thinking that perhaps we could discuss the -- [ Barks ] >> What the?

>> Sorry, sorry.

It's old KGB technique.

I can't help it.

Okay, where were we?

It was arms control, da?

>> We'll get to that.

But first, I know you've been hacking into all kinds of American -- Vladimir, what the heck is that?

>> What?

What?

Is -- Is there something on my face?

>> Come on, man.

You think this is some kind of joke?

>> A joke, da?

Here's a joke.

One morning I poisoned a dissident in my underwear.

How he got into my underwear, I have no idea.

[ Rimshot, laughter ] Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll be here all week, folks, for next 20 years.

>> You're trying my patience.

Like I said, I need a predictable -- >> Okay, okay, you're right.

It's time to bury hatchet.

We aren't getting any younger, especially you.

>> Alright, fella.

Let's have a new relationship then.

>> Yes.

>> No hacking.

>> Sure.

>> Or invading countries.

>> I know you are, but what am I?

>> Vladimir!

>> Okay, okay, let's shake on it.

♪♪ Sike!

[ Laughs ] You sucker.

>> Vladimir, that's enough!

It's impossible to deal with you goddamn Ruskies.

>> [ Gasps ] You see, our arrogant American partners do not respect us at all.

This is not a summit.

It's a -- >> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see, you like the G7, you just want something that has a number after your G, check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...