The June 2026 G7 summit in Thonon-les-Bains was the last leaders' summit Emmanuel Macron would host as chair — France holds its presidential election in May 2027. As it happened, this swan song unfolded in a thoroughly French register of absurdity: France hosted the meeting, Switzerland footed the bill, French protesters crossed the border to trash a Swiss city, and Macron himself bowed out in a repeating loop of "wanting to be a great-power leader → being checked at every turn."
1. The White Obama
Wang Xiao gave Macron a nickname: the White Obama.
"He has to walk with one hand in his pocket, a pensive look on his face… He's the White Obama."
What the nickname captures is not physical resemblance but a performative great-power posture. What Macron must project is not that "France is strong" but that "France ought to be strong." He put AI on the G7 agenda and declared that France is "the only country in all of Europe with its own frontier data model" and "still a formidable competitor to China and the United States in AI" — a line those around him heard as ironic, because the reality is closer to this: the first- and second-place runners glance in their rear-view mirror at the third, convinced that only two racers are in the field.
2. France Hosts, Switzerland Pays
The security arrangements for this G7 contained a detail most people missed: every leader's plane flew into Geneva first, then proceeded overland to the summit venue in Thonon-les-Bains. To make that work, France asked Switzerland to supply 3,000 security personnel — paid for by Swiss taxpayers.
The chain reaction that arrangement set off was more absurd still.
Anti-G7 demonstrations broke out in Geneva, and 60 percent of the participants were French. French protesters brought the "French style of protest" — smash-and-grab — and turned the streets of Geneva into the very stage they had meant to set back home in France. Then all public transport shut down, and journalists stranded between the airport and the venue had no choice but to cross the Franco-Swiss border on foot — no trains, no buses, no taxis.
Jin Liang, a France-based journalist covering the G7, offered a longer-view observation in the same conversation: the many stumbles of this G7 reflect a broader decline in French influence in the twilight of the Macron era. When France cannot even host a summit on its own doorstep without a neighbor paying to clean up afterward, the image of a "great power" is hard to sustain with one hand in a pocket.
3. The G7 as a Stress Test
On the ground, Wang Xiao put forward a concept: every G7 meeting damages the G7.
"The G7 summit has become a stress test inside the Western world."
The evidence for this judgment lies in the internal contradictions of the G7's own official materials. Flipping through the various leaders' speeches on site — Macron's long-form oration, Britain's economic ledger, Trump's tweet-length declarations — Li Xiang found that the texts shared almost no common ground.
Macron tried to invite a broad slate of Global South countries (South Korea, India, Qatar, Kenya) to widen the G7's representativeness; after an invitation to Afghanistan was declined, it was switched to Kenya. But this did not resolve the core problem: the invitees were seated as "observers," not as "equal participants." Macron's answer was to turn the G7 from "playing among ourselves" into "playing in front of more people" — while leaving the premise that "I still have the right to lead" fully intact.
4. An Awkward Dance Across the Atlantic
Macron tried to keep Trump close with a dinner at the Palace of Versailles — extending the summit by a day to celebrate Trump's 86th birthday. But during the group photo, Trump gave Macron a light pat and let his hand drop without a handshake; Macron in turn reached over and seized Trump's arm to hold on to the connection.
"Trump gave him a light pat on the side… reached out and patted him: 'Little brother, you've still got some training to do.'"
In the group photo, the G7 leaders fell into clearly defined tiers: Macron and Sanae Takaichi at the very front, Trump and Meloni in the second row, Modi in the third. Macron's position at the head of the line was not proof of leadership — it was simply that his spot happened to be by the door.
5. The AI Luncheon: Trump Names Names at Random, Everyone Else Borrows the Stage for Politics
During the summit, Macron arranged an artificial-intelligence luncheon, asking each leader to bring along business figures from their own country's AI sector. The scene Li Xiang observed on site turned out to be more dramatic than the agenda itself.
Trump "casually mustered the troops, naming five" — one each from France, India, Britain, and Germany. The people on the list were, "honestly, names no one had ever heard of before"; Li Xiang said that had he not seen this list, he truly would not have recognized any of them — he only recognized the handful Trump brought with him. But the live broadcast left one thing unmistakable: the Americans were supremely confident, radiating the sense that this field "obviously answers only to me."
The other countries, meanwhile, turned the occasion into a showcase for their own views and their own face-time. India's representative opened with polished words: since I come from the Global South, I hope that in the future development of AI the voice of the Global South will be heard more. Li Xiang's verdict: that kind of line fits any setting — "he could apply that formula to any field and say the same thing."
What struck Li Xiang even more was an aside from a journalist on site: if this had been a conversation between China and the United States, it would have been far more watchable. The implication: the generational gap between the other countries is simply too wide — "he just can't get into the conversation."
"The End of the Backyard — Macron and the Colonial Backlash in the Sahel, Deconstructed" documents Macron's predicament in Africa. That piece, told from the vantage point of the Sahel, traces the contraction of French power in Africa and the blowback it provoked. It complements this essay: one is about the retreat of France's external sphere of influence; the other, about France's image anxiety on its own European home turf.