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.
If this electoral gridlock [in domestic policy] does occur, it may well result in Trump — like several other reelected presidents of recent decades — increasingly turning to foreign policy.
The two men—the older one from glitzy Manhattan, the younger upstart from fashionably upmarket Brooklyn—have built formidable fanbases by championing diametrically opposed visions of America.