Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week is a capstone event meant to demonstrate the president’s indelible mark on world history.
But while Chinese pageantry will portray him as an honored statesman, the visit will also show how some of Trump’s decisions — including a war with Iran that he can’t end — risk undercutting his authority and American power.
A tumultuous global situation consciously created by the American president will make the backdrop for this summit unlike any meeting of US and Chinese leaders since President Richard Nixon coaxed China onto the world stage in the 1970s.
US and Chinese summits have long pursued stability in what has become the world’s most important diplomatic relationship. But Trump is the antithesis to steadiness: He’s turned the US into one of the world’s top sources of instability.
Trump has also loosened traditional foundations of American primacy, including free trade, alliances and an international order that favors Washington. He sees this transformation as an affirmation of naked American power and unilateral freedom of action. Critics view it as an act of self-sabotage that neuters US global advantages at the very moment American supremacy is being tested on multiple fronts by an aspiring Chinese superpower.
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