Donald Trump will arrive in China exasperated that he has achieved none of his war aims in Iran, a situation that President Xi Jinping is set to exploit to China's advantage, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley.
What Trump's China Trip Means for the World
Trump had expected a "big fat hug" from China in thanks for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but he won't get one. He has failed to end the throttling of Beijing's oil supplies. This is good news for China, as Trump is indifferent to his own failure. But it is bad news for Taiwan, the West, US allies around the world, and democracies in general.
The US president will arrive for his summit with China exasperated that he has achieved none of his varied war aims in Iran. He will arrive having been humiliated by a weaker but dogged regime that survives in Tehran.
Geopolitical Tectonics Shift
The results are likely to be a sudden shift in the tectonic plates of geopolitics to China's advantage, and Beijing has done almost nothing to deliver it. The key lies in Trump's psychology. Vain and peevish, he has blundered, alongside Israel, into a war with Iran that had obvious, dangerous consequences, and now must find a way out without looking weak.
He has threatened to reinforce failure with a genocidal threat to wipe out a whole civilisation. But when he is in the room with Xi, it is membership of the club that Trump wants most. He needs to feel equal among the world's most powerful authoritarian leaders, and he will do almost anything to win their approval.
Fiona Hill, a former national security adviser to Trump now with the Brookings Institution, told the World of Trouble podcast: "Trump looks at people who are frankly in charge of everything, who have basically the bling... And that's what he wants to be. And he believes that he is elevated in everybody's minds by their association, by being in their company."
"What this is really about is Trump himself wanting to be recognised by absolutely everybody who matters. And that's a very small group of people... And he only gets that [when he gets the approval] of people like President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia, the royal families of here, there and everywhere... That's the coin of the realm for him," she explained.
Xi's Leverage
The Chinese president is likely to slip Trump the gold sovereign of "Big Man" association in Beijing, and it is unlikely that Trump will extract any advantage for America from this membership. Xi has helped arm Iran. China is Russia's most important military supplier in its war against Ukraine. China controls most of the critical minerals that drive global technologies and is decades ahead in exploiting them in Africa.
China usually gets almost 50 per cent of its oil imports from vessels that sail through the Strait of Hormuz. By importing sanctioned oil from Venezuela, Iran and Russia, it has also enjoyed a discount on prices. The disaster that has been Iran's response to the attacks by America—shutting the strait and bombarding the Gulf—should be offset by Trump's arm-twisting China into reducing its backing for Tehran and Moscow.
Xi is "somebody that needs oil. We don't," Trump said earlier this month, while confessing that he had asked China to stop sending weapons to Iran. Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, was in Beijing last week, ahead of Trump's visit. China called on both the US, which is blockading Iran, and Tehran, which has closed the strait, to open the flow of oil and end the conflict, taking a studiously balanced approach.
Trump's Exit Strategy
Trump continues to threaten Iran while offering negotiations. His main option for exiting the war without total loss of face may be getting Iran to agree to send its nuclear materials to China for safekeeping, which would appear to end Tehran's ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. That would be a bauble that China could offer a US president who wants to share the same space as Xi and Putin. These men know how to play on Trump's weakness for their power.
Xi may be able to get Iran to agree to terms that allow Trump to exit his war. In return, Beijing is likely to want to see the $11bn military aid programme for Taiwan, which it claims as Chinese territory, go away. China would also like free rein to continue its longstanding extensions of its claimed territory in the South China Sea, where it has been building artificial islands. It wants to own that sea, which is a potential choke point of global trade.
These concessions would give China unlimited powers in its region, just as the deliberate weakening of Ukraine gives Russia a strategic boost in the realms that Moscow has traditionally dominated.
Spheres of Influence
Trump's Big Man mission is, he has repeatedly said, to see the world carved up into spheres of influence, with the US dominating the western hemisphere, China the east and Russia the middle, with its western faultline running through Ukraine. That means ceding US power in these regions. Weakening the US global reach suits Xi and Putin just fine.
Xi will throw his arm around Trump and walk him through gilded halls, making sure the US president feels very much part of the gang of three who can rule the world. For now.
