Trump Touches Down in Beijing for Two-Day Xi Summit on Trade & Iran War

Summits that mix red-carpet pomp with unresolved crises evoke Richard Nixon’s 1972 Beijing visit, when ceremony masked deep strategic bargaining during the Vietnam War and the Cold War realignment. Half a century later, the U.S. and China again juggle cooperation (soybeans, fentanyl controls) with systemic rivalry over technology, Taiwan and energy chokepoints—now complicated by a Strait-of-Hormuz shutdown reminiscent of the 1973 oil shock. This meeting fits a centuries-old pattern of great-power peer management: the Ottomans and Habsburgs negotiated truces even while skirmishing, and the U.S.–Soviet SALT talks of 1972–79 showed adversaries can limit escalation without settling the competition. Whether Beijing buys more Boeings or nudges Tehran matters less on a 100-year arc than the precedent that even heated rivals must keep talking to prevent a spiral that history—from 1914’s failed diplomacy to 2022’s Russia-NATO freeze—shows can otherwise trigger systemic war.