Read The Diplomat, Know The Asia-Pacific
The upcoming meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Xi will be followed by a Putin-Xi summit. Will there be scope for triangular diplomacy?
Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to meet with China’s top leader Xi Jinping in Beijing soon after the China-U.S. summit on May 14-15. Do these back-to-back visits indicate a new phase of triangular diplomacy? Unlike Nixon-era China-U.S. summits, where U.S. and Chinese leaders sought to use their rapprochement to further isolate the Soviet Union, the upcoming meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Xi is unlikely to bring pressure to bear on Russia on Iran or Ukraine.
Trump is no stranger to triangular diplomacy. In April 2017, while hosting Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, Trump revealed that the United States had just bombed Russia-allied Syria. China later abstained on a United Nations resolution condemning Syria’s use of chemical weapons against civilians, instead of vetoing it along with Russia. At the time, a Chinese expert on the U.S. argued that Trump may have been trying to create discord between China and Russia over Syria with this move, as well as to demonstrate his own distance from Putin to domestic audiences.
