Government by temper tantrum - Trump stares down the world

A well-worn platitude in the newspaper trade has it that a picture is worth 1,000 words. While pictures of grinning politicians posing with smiling voters for carefully choreographed photo opportunities merit barely a sentence, the exemplary photograph of G7 leaders at the tail-end of their futile summit meeting in Quebec is the rare exception that proves the rule: An exasperated, bewildered Angela Merkel leans across the table, glowering down at a petulant, recalcitrant, and seemingly vacuous Donald Trump, who, we have to remind ourselves, is the 45th president of the United States of America.

This is a picture that might play well in Peoria — and elsewhere in the American heartland that shoved Mr Trump into the office once held by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Jack Kennedy — but it depicts vividly the chasm threatening the network of relationships the US has built with its near-neighbours and its allies in Europe and Asia.