The Beijing summit did not produce a major agreement between the great powers on the region, but it firmly established that Middle Eastern crises are now deeply tied to the great-power dialogue.
During the Cold War, the United States occupied the apex of this triangular dynamic, pitting China and the USSR against each other. Today, it is Beijing that occupies that apex.
A summit that would normally send a reassuring message ... faces total uncertainty thanks to the weakness of the United States. The only person to blame for this is Trump.
The summits are not endpoints. They are the mechanism by which two countries, which can neither resolve their differences nor afford to rupture them, manage the interval between crises.
[W]hen ethics are abandoned for epics, and when political power subverts rational military decision-making, it is not surprising that symptoms of strategic fatigue begin to develop.
Trump claims that it was due to America's generosity and protection that other countries benefited and raised their living standards, while the United States itself gained nothing.