The Sino-Soviet split gave Washington the hinge of the triangle, and Kissinger made sure America sat on it. Half a century later, Donald Trump is being invited to draw a triangle of his own. According to the Wall Street Journal, Vladimir Putin used an October 9 phone call with Trump, the same call in which the two men agreed that Washington would buy Russian diesel, to propose a three-way summit with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Shenzhen on November 18–19.
torsdag 22. oktober 2026
A Trump-Putin-Xi summit would put Xi at the apex
In July 1971, Henry Kissinger developed a convenient stomachache in Pakistan, vanished from public view and turned up in Beijing. The secret trip that led to Nixon’s opening to China rested on a simple piece of geometry: in a world of three great powers, the smart move is to stand closer to each of your rivals than they stand to one another.
The Sino-Soviet split gave Washington the hinge of the triangle, and Kissinger made sure America sat on it. Half a century later, Donald Trump is being invited to draw a triangle of his own. According to the Wall Street Journal, Vladimir Putin used an October 9 phone call with Trump, the same call in which the two men agreed that Washington would buy Russian diesel, to propose a three-way summit with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Shenzhen on November 18–19.
The Sino-Soviet split gave Washington the hinge of the triangle, and Kissinger made sure America sat on it. Half a century later, Donald Trump is being invited to draw a triangle of his own. According to the Wall Street Journal, Vladimir Putin used an October 9 phone call with Trump, the same call in which the two men agreed that Washington would buy Russian diesel, to propose a three-way summit with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Shenzhen on November 18–19.