The leaders of the three biggest nuclear powers on Earth will sit down together for the first time next week in Shenzhen, and the White House says they'll discuss the Iran war and shrinking the world's nuclear stockpiles. The one war the Russian president is personally running, the one now in its fifth year, is not on the agenda. Elon Musk is coming along for the trip, because of course he is.
Explain Like I'm 5 · 47-second video
Narrated and captioned. Made by The Dingo Daily from this article.
A Summit Nobody Has Ever Held
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales announced Friday that President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China's tech hub, as reported by CBS News and NBC News. It is the first three-way meeting among the three leaders, a gathering of the heads of the world's biggest nuclear powers.
The itinerary is a long one. Trump leaves Washington on Monday, lands in the Philippines on Tuesday for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, then heads to Shenzhen. The trilateral will cap off his China visit, which also includes a bilateral working lunch and meeting with Xi on Thursday. That will be their fourth meeting since Trump returned to power last year.
There is no one-on-one with Putin on the schedule. The two men will still share a room at the trilateral and appear together at other events, according to a senior U.S. official.
The Official Agenda Is Nukes, Iran, and Not the Thing Putin Started
"The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world," Wales told reporters. "This proliferation, President Trump believes, is very dangerous."
Trump also intends to raise the Iran war with Xi and Putin, a senior U.S. official said. Notice what that sentence includes. The U.S. is at war with Iran. Russia has deepened its military, intelligence and diplomatic partnership with Iran. So the president is going to a room with the two leaders propping up the other side and plans to talk about it. We'll see how that goes.
And Ukraine? Off the table. A senior official explained that Washington has a "whole other track" of negotiations with Kyiv and Moscow, that China isn't part of that track, and that "it doesn't seem appropriate to have the Ukraine discussion there." The official pointed to recent talks between U.S. envoys and both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Putin Gets to Sit at the Big Kids' Table
Think about what Putin is getting here. His country has been fighting a war of aggression for nearly five years. He is, by any normal diplomatic standard, a pariah. Next Thursday he gets a seat beside the American and Chinese presidents at a summit about the future of the planet's most dangerous weapons.
NBC News described the Kremlin's view of it bluntly: a coveted chance to posture as a superpower on par with Washington and Beijing. That is exactly what this is. Putin doesn't need an agreement. He needs the photograph. And he's about to get it, with the Ukraine war conveniently left outside the frame.
Xi, for his part, may see the moment as a chance to flex China's growing clout and prestige. Everybody in the room is getting something out of the optics. The question is whether anyone is getting anything out of the substance.
The Adults' Table, as Described by Actual Adults
A senior U.S. official said it's time for China to "step up to the adults' table, if you will, and have adult conversations about adult things." Reader, that is a direct quote. About a summit featuring a man who rejected an extension of the last U.S.-Russia nuclear treaty.
Here's the backstory. New START, the last nuclear arms pact between Russia and the U.S., expired in February, removing caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than 50 years. Russia asked to extend it for another year. Trump said no and demanded "a new, improved and modernized" deal that includes China.
China has no interest. Pentagon estimates put Beijing's arsenal at more than 600 warheads, compared to more than 5,000 each for the U.S. and Russia. Why would the country with a fraction of the weapons agree to limits written for the two giants? The official described Thursday as an "entry point" and "the first conversation," and said no agreement is expected. So this is a photo op with a nuclear theme.
The Nvidia Scandal Is Definitely Not Coming Up
Two senior officials went out of their way to say the espionage mess swirling around Nvidia will not figure into the trip. That scandal centers on an investigation of Alice Huang, an alleged Chinese intelligence agent who allegedly had a romantic relationship with Nvidia chief Jensen Huang. The officials don't expect Trump to raise it with Beijing.
"We do not negotiate American export controls," one senior official said. "These are national security matters that we develop in the administration and interagency process, and we don't expect it to figure at all in any of our conversations with the Chinese while we're there."
If you have to hold a pre-trip briefing to announce that you won't be talking about the spy scandal, the spy scandal is the elephant on the plane. And remember who else is on the plane.
Elon Musk Is Coming Along, Strictly as a Plus-One
Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk will accompany Trump to China. He is the only business leader in the official delegation, according to a senior U.S. official, who stressed that other American executives will attend the summit on their own and there is no formal U.S. business delegation.
Musk will not be in any official meetings, officials said, including the one with Xi and Putin. So the world's richest man is traveling with the president to a summit with the Chinese leader, in a country where Tesla has huge business interests, and he'll just be hanging around. Reassuring stuff.
One more detail: officials said there are no plans for Trump to engage with North Korea on this trip.
The Dingo Take
Who exactly is this meeting for? Not for Ukraine, which gets its own separate "track" and a seat at no table in Shenzhen. Not for the nuclear question either, since the officials themselves say no agreement is expected and China has shown no interest in a pact. What's left is the picture: three men who control most of the world's nukes, smiling in a row.
The administration lets a treaty die in February, refuses to extend it, then flies to China to lecture everyone about "adult conversations about adult things." It talks about Iran with the two leaders who have been propping up Iran. It brings along a billionaire with a stake in the Chinese market while swearing the chip scandal is a nonissue. Every one of those facts is a red flag, and they're all in the same press call.
Maybe something real comes out of Thursday. Arms control talks have to start somewhere, and an "entry point" is an entry point. But when the guest list is a war criminal's rehabilitation tour, a rival superpower, and Elon Musk, you should look at who's getting the photo and who's getting left off the agenda. Ukraine is getting left off the agenda.
Comments