The cancellation of the Pentagon's representatives' presence at the Security Forum organized by Aspen Institute every July, less than 24 hours before it started, has been a new blow to this type of event. Thus, the most important security and defense conference in the U.S. and the second in the world, after Munich, took place this week without anyone from the U.S. Department of Defense, which not only is the country where the meeting is held but also the nation that accounts for 37% of all Earth's military spending.
The decision reveals the inconsistency of the Trump administration. Because the Secretary of Defense himself, Pete Hegseth, ordered his subordinates not to attend Aspen despite having authorized them to go just a few weeks ago.
The Aspen Security Forum, as it is known in the U.S., has been bringing together high-ranking officials, companies, and international relations theorists for three decades. It was founded by a Republican - Reagan and Bush senior's National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft - and two Democrats - Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense Dick Perry and the advisor to that president and International Relations theorist Joseph Nye. "More than bipartisan, we are non-partisan. We have never asked anyone about their political affiliation," stated the current co-chairman, Nicholas Burns, who was the U.S. ambassador to NATO with George W. Bush during the 9/11 years and the invasion of Iraq, and to China with Joe Biden. The other co-chair is George W. Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. With such names, it does not seem that the Forum has any ideological bias. In fact, the reason given by the Pentagon spokesperson, Kingsley Wilson, apart from the usual criticism of "globalism," was that the Aspen Institute "has invited former high-ranking officials."
The president does not like to be questioned either in the U.S. or abroad
The argument points to a course of action of which the Aspen Security Forum is just an anecdote: a deliberate effort by the Trump administration to boycott international debate forums, especially if they accommodate members of the Democratic Party. It is the same policy that led them to close the Wilson Center, a Washington semi-public think tank specializing in international relations. Everything indicates that at least part of the president's team does not like to be questioned, within or outside its borders, and is willing to take that policy to its ultimate consequences. The result is that these events have unexpectedly found themselves in a battleground they never thought they would enter.
It is an extreme position reminiscent of, for example, China, which has an increasingly irrelevant presence in conferences where it does not control the message, even though until 2023 it did send high-ranking officials to Aspen, where Beijing is unanimously considered a strategic rival of the West that must be contained.
For some, it is just a reflection of the internal struggles within the Trump administration and, especially, of Hegseth's tendency to go his own way, as happened in June when he unilaterally suspended, without the White House's knowledge, the military aid that the U.S. continues to provide to Ukraine. But the Pentagon generals and high-ranking officials' no-show is seen as a reflection of what is happening in Washington. "If you are a diplomat in that city, you can have the doors of the government open today and closed tomorrow." That is the opinion of Irene Braam, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a German think tank specializing in transatlantic relations, democracy promotion, digital governance, and economic inclusion, which is among the sponsors of the Aspen Security Forum. According to this thesis, the U.S. government's strategy is the absence of strategy. And that has put international conferences in an unprecedented crossroads for which they are not prepared: whom to invite so that the world's greatest superpower, whom everyone wants to hear, is present.
Diplomats in Washington live in uncertainty today
It is not a minor issue. If the U.S. does not attend, other participants lose interest. But these events are based on dialogue. If a conference turns into a celebration of a government, even if it is the U.S. government, it loses interest. No one can imagine a world of international forums divided between MAGA and non-MAGA. Especially because the MAGA world - as the political movement created by Trump is known in the U.S. - is ever-changing. A few months ago, Elon Musk was almost the prime minister; now he has fallen out of favor. Meanwhile, Sam Altman, the founder and CEO of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI - the creator of ChatGPT - has gone from being persona non grata at Mar-a-Lago to being an honored guest of the president. One of the regulars at Aspen is Mark Esper, who was Secretary of Defense under Trump's first term. However, his participation in the Forum has been cited as one of the reasons why Hegseth prohibited his high-ranking officials from attending. It is a matter of personal and political preferences and biases that are difficult to unravel.
In any case, as explained by someone with experience in organizing these types of events, "this is a terrible sign for other conferences, such as the Halifax International Security Forum [held every November], Davos [in January], or Munich [in February]." This person does not want their name to be made public "because no one knows if someone in Washington will get upset with any statement." From their point of view, the problem is greater because all these meetings are organized by non-profit entities that "lack the resources of governments like Qatar [which organizes its own forum every December]," they explain. Additionally, the functioning of these organizations relies heavily on the leadership of specific individuals. "If those leaders fall out of favor with the government, the whole structure wobbles," they conclude.
The best example is Davos. In April, the founder and president of the World Economic Forum, which organizes that meeting, Klaus Schwab, had to resign amid a wave of accusations of embezzlement, report manipulation, and even sexual harassment. The institution's attempts to have the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, leave her position and replace Schwab have failed, and the WEF has been without a president for almost three months. This lack of leadership is problematic for organizations that depend on donors' goodwill to sustain their activities.
The signals are dire for events like Davos
Already in January, Davos had trouble securing the presence of members of the new U.S. government. It is true that this was partly due to the organizers choosing exactly for the start of the meeting on January 20, the day of the president's inauguration. And that Trump participated via video conference, with a speech from the U.S., just like his Special Missions Envoy (as his position is), and Secretary of State nominee, Richard Grenell. But apart from them, there were no heavyweights from the U.S. in Davos.
Three weeks later, at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance did participate, and he was accompanied by a considerable entourage. But he showed no interest in talking to anyone. Furthermore, his intervention was a fierce attack on Europe and an implicit defense of Russia and an open support for forces that question liberal democracy in Europe. In Munich, the U.S. explained to the Europeans that they are the enemy.
"We live in a time where nothing is predictable or conventional"
But it is not only private events that are affected. On June 16, Donald Trump left the G-7 summit in Kananaskis, in the Canadian province of Alberta, just as it was starting. Although the official reason was the war between Israel and Iran, in which the U.S. directly entered six days later, it was clear that the president's interest in the meeting was minimal. During the mere 24 hours he spent in Kananaskis, he criticized Russia's expulsion from the G-7 after the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and opposed imposing new sanctions on Moscow, arguing that they "cost a lot of money."
Trump, who had imposed tariffs on the other attendees, was thus isolated in Alberta. And he showed that the meeting was of little importance to him, or rather, that he was not comfortable in it.
The great paradox is that, as Braam explains, "just a few days later, Trump was participating without any problem in the NATO summit in The Hague, behaving very kindly, although perhaps that had something to do with the warmth with which he was received by the Dutch royal family." His final analysis is perhaps the best summary not only of the United States' attitude towards international meetings but of the state of world politics: "We live in a time where nothing is conventional or predictable."
Be that as it may, and on a practical level, the spokesperson for a faction in a civil war supported precisely by the Trump administration, could not help but admit on Friday that "after this, we will have to look at the list of participants to see if there is anyone who has fallen out of favor with Trump and based on that evaluate whether we will attend or not."