"Trump would really be the skunk at the picnic"
On his first foreign trip since the midterm elections, Donald Trump will fly to France on Friday night for the centennial of the end of the first world war –
but will skip a summit on global cooperation in Paris, which begins the same day.
The US president ... will leave before the Paris Peace Forum, which (French President) Macron has organised as the focal point of the gathering. The French president said the aim of the forum was to make sure the miscalculations of the world powers that led to the the 1914-18 war were avoided by more collective decision-making in the 21st century.
Trump has been uneasy at multilateral summits, preferring one-on-one meetings. His national security adviser, John Bolton, is also opposed to multilateral institutions, arguing the US should wield its power alone or with close allies.
Thomas Wright, the director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, said:
“It would would be odd for Trump and John Bolton to show up at a forum for global governance. Normally you would want the president of the US at an occasion like this, but Trump would really be the skunk at the picnic. His view of multilateral cooperation is that it damages sovereignty.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/09/trump-paris-macron-peace-forum