Trump Will Meet Xi and Putin in China on Thursday, White House Says

The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.

President Donald Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, Nov. 19, in Shenzhen, China, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the White House said Friday. Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman, told reporters Friday that "The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world, whose proliferation President Trump believes is very dangerous." She said the meeting would take place on Thursday in China, Reuters reported.

NBC News quoted Wales saying, "President Trump will conclude his visit to China with a trilateral meeting between the president of the United States, the president of the People's Republic of China and the president of the Russian Federation." A senior U.S. official said no agreement is expected. "We do not expect to get to any kind of agreement," the official told Reuters regarding the nuclear issue. The official added, "This is the beginning of hopefully a conversation that can be productive going forward." The same official said, "we do think it's time for China to sort of step up, you know, to the adults' table, if you will, and have adult conversations about adult things."

The talks come after the last U.S.-Russia nuclear arms pact, New START, expired in February, leaving the world's two largest declared arsenals without treaty caps for the first time in more than half a century, NBC News and Al Jazeera reported. When that treaty expired, Trump rejected a Russian call to extend the two-country deal for another year and called for a "new, improved and modernized" agreement that includes China. Beijing has long resisted joining those talks, pointing to the far larger American and Russian stockpiles. Reuters, citing the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said Russia holds the most stored nuclear warheads, followed by the United States and then China. NBC, citing Pentagon estimates, said China's arsenal is more than 600 warheads, while the United States and Russia are each estimated to have more than 5,000.

Trump also plans to discuss the war with Iran, but is not expected to raise Russia's war in Ukraine, officials told both Reuters and NBC News. A senior official told Reuters that the administration has had many recent meetings with the Russians, that China is not part of that track, and that a Ukraine discussion in this setting would not seem appropriate. There is no one-on-one meeting with Putin scheduled, the officials said, and Trump is not expected to meet North Korea's Kim Jong Un on the trip. Elon Musk will travel with the president to China but will not attend the meeting with Xi and Putin. Reuters reported that Trump is not expected to discuss Ukraine's access to satellite communications from Musk's SpaceX.

Reuters said Trump is leaving Monday for a four-day trip to Asia that also includes a stop in the Philippines. The Chinese and Russian embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Officials also said they do not expect the administration's dispute over Nvidia chip exports and an espionage investigation tied to an alleged Chinese agent to come up in the Shenzhen talks. "These are national security matters that we develop in the administration and interagency process, and we don't expect it to figure at all in any of our conversations with the Chinese while we're there," a senior U.S. official told NBC News.

The planned gathering has been compared to the 1945 Yalta Conference. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed that comparison, while still calling the meeting significant. "It's clear that a meeting between the leaders of countries such as Russia, China and the United States is extremely significant," he said, adding that any vision of global order "should be based entirely on mutual benefit and mutual respect." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed concern that the three-way meeting could become a place to discuss a Ukraine deal behind Kyiv's back, NBC News and Al Jazeera reported. Other recent fights over presidential power in Washington, including when the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Trump's border asylum ban, will not be the subject of the Shenzhen session. A senior official, NBC News reported, described the session as an "entry point" and "the first conversation."

Opinion:

A meeting of the three largest nuclear powers is not a small thing, and it is right to talk about shrinking arsenals after New START ran out. Talk is not a treaty. Putin is still waging a war of conquest in Ukraine. He does not become a peacemaker by sitting for a photograph in Shenzhen. China has spent years building a larger nuclear force and has shown little interest in a cap that would freeze that work to please Washington. Officials already admit they do not expect an agreement. Believe them.

It also matters what will not be on the table. Iran will be discussed. Ukraine will not, because Beijing is not on that track. That is a warning, not a footnote. The United States should go to this meeting with clear eyes, tell the truth, and refuse to bargain away a country that was not invited. Verify everything. Do not confuse a first conversation with peace.