It is no exaggeration that the American President and the German Chancellor once again emphasized the unity of the West at the beginning of the G-7 meeting.
So far there haven't been many outliers, and in the end it doesn't depend on countries like Hungary.
Biden's thanks to Scholz were more than a friendly phrase for the host in Elmau.
For many years, Germany, often together with France, has prevented the West from responding effectively to Putin's revisionism, which did not begin with the Ukraine war.
If the German government hadn't corrected that, it would have been difficult for the EU and NATO to come up with a unified position.
Really enforceable?
An honest appraisal also includes the fact that the western sanctions are not (yet) having the effect everyone from Washington to Brussels had imagined.
Putin is currently able to compensate for the loss of his western customers, even if this has only partially taken place, by increasing energy prices.
This is a setback for Western strategy.
A price cap on Russian oil, which the Americans are now proposing, could be a solution, provided it can really be enforced through ship insurance.
Based on the experience gained with the oil embargo, however, it is not wrong to examine the potential effects of such a step in detail, as EU Council President Michel is demanding.
The ban on Russian gold imports that the G 7 want to announce, on the other hand, is only a very small jab at Putin.
He greets the Elmau assembly in his own way: with rockets aimed at Ukrainian cities and intensified military cooperation with Belarus, which is only ostensibly sovereign.
Unfortunately, as is now the norm, Putin is playing the nuclear card.
That doesn't help him against NATO, but he is bringing nuclear weapons back into world politics.
This is not a wise policy, even for a nuclear power.
It can have consequences far beyond Ukraine and Europe.