At the G7 summit they joked, Boris Johnson and Co. A little bit anyway. What does this staging tell us? Also those of the wives of the heads of state and government? In any case, nothing that warlord Vladimir Putin should feel afraid of. Was that the West’s intention? In any case, the anti-Western counter-event was clearly different.
Who would want to see Boris Johnson shirtless, riding a horse, say, in the Highlands of Scotland while it’s still part of Britain. Then Justin Trudeau, for whom mainly women voted on Twitter afterwards, which you can understand if you look at the pictures of the body-taut Canadian Prime Minister from 2015.
Unfortunately, no one wanted to see Olaf Scholz in a male hunting pose in the social networks. A defeat for Germany in this competition: G7 is looking for the superstar. Scholz will be able to cope with them, the Germans too, they don’t like posers in the chancellery. One Schröder was enough for years.
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Things may have gone worse for the Italian. But Mario Draghi has since taught his compatriots that a more decent state representation than that of Silvio Berlusconi earns their country more international respect than bunga bunga. Ursula von der Leyen, in the thankless role of the only woman among men in the Western world, tried to keep up (“Horsebackriding is the best though”) – and failed. Black humor is a special discipline that requires special skills. Which is rather not at home in Germany.
Jackets on or off? “Shall we take off our clothes?” “We have to show that we are tougher than Putin.” Says Boris Johnson. “We should look at that bare-breasted horseman again,” says Justin Trudeau. “That’s the way it is. We should show them our muscles.” Johnson again. What is meant is that iconographic macho image of Putin, taken in western Siberia, 2009.
Why are we writing this down here? Isn’t that trivial stuff? Finally, the meeting of the G7 heads of state and government is about the war. To Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For more weapons he demands. And gets, as “CNN” currently reports. The air defense system that probably also protects the White House from missiles. After the Israelis refused to supply their “Iron Dome” anti-missile shield to Ukraine. The Israelis don’t want to upset the Russians, they need their goodwill in the conflict with Syria. In foreign policy, beauty prizes are not up for grabs.
Pictures are politics, so we’re making a note of that here. Putin’s equestrian pose had a political message. “I can cowboy too,” she said. Internally, America-hater Putin aimed to finally follow up all the humiliating news of the collapse of the Soviet empire from the previous years with a defiant message of strength. Putin has repeated this in countless poses: the Russian boss swimming on ice, hunting bears, in a judo suit with a black belt.
This fits: military parades as well as thunderous threats from Putin’s so-called parliament. Berlin is only seven minutes away. Lithuania is not really independent from Russia. The first bombs will destroy London. All a sauce. But precisely: a staging that fits.
The Russians are not a nation of knowledge, they don’t have a Silicon Valley to flaunt. “Upper Volta with nuclear missiles,” Helmut Schmidt scoffed 50 years ago. However, he had forgotten the gas. So the Russians show their rockets. And her gas. And their grim threatening and fighting faces.
Johnson’s mockery is highly political. One day after Putin’s soldiers bombed a maternity clinic in Kyiv, Johnson’s nod to Putin riding through the wilderness is a grotesque finger. A gesture that the buddies Boris and Justin probably understood as the only ones. The 79-year-old US President Joe Biden coolly decreed that the jackets should remain on. So: Unfortunately, one has to state that the West lacks the art of staging.
Look at the G7 photos, all posed, so intentional. Suits but no ties. Friendly men joking with a woman. A senior group in front of a friendly senior Bavarian mountain. A political hiking day. No deterrent anywhere. War – was there something?
They are all standing in front of the bench on which Barack Obama sat casually in 2015, his arms spread out over the wooden backrest. Angela Merkel standing in front of him, arms outstretched, wearing a red jacket. The picture, which the dpa photographer Michael Kappeler shot in violation of the protocol, went around the world – it established Merkel’s reputation as the most powerful woman in the world (a myth).
Anyway, you can do it differently. The photo of the BRICS summit, the global counter-event, if you will, was taken immediately before the current G7 picture. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – five men, five black suits, heads of state and government clasped hands, ties. Seriousness, determination, concentrated power – political summit, not hiking day. The rest of the world supports Ukraine? No way: The rest of the world supports Putin. What a PR coup.
A word about women. There are these pictures when Joe Biden got out of the Airforce One and trudges past the Bavarian costumes that Markus Söder built for him. Women in Dirndl, so far, so Bavarian. But with bouquets of flowers in the décolleté? Just what does this production want to say to Americans, Japanese, French, Italians, Canadians and Britons?
Then it goes on later, with the photos of the women’s program. The wives (you have to put it that way) with hiking sticks, led by old Alpler Christian Neureuther: “They are so lovely, it was so warm. It was as if we had known each other for a long time.” All right: the men do big politics, while the women go hiking, uncharmingly equipped with sticks to prevent stumbling, just to be on the safe side.
How sweet, Putin might think. And wistfully remember how he was once allowed to threaten a German chancellor with his black Labrador. In other words:
Where is the women’s representative when you need her?
