That’s two world leaders and two comeuppances for our president. First, Russia’s Vladimir Putin handed Sir Donald his lunch in Anchorage, Alaska, after the president arrived, convinced that his good pal Vlad would simply end his war in Ukraine after Trump treated him like a king.
Then, for the past two days, President Trump went to China, convinced that Xi Jinping, that country’s formidable leader, would squeeze his client state Iran to agree to a peace deal with Trump on Trump’s terms. Instead, he got a lecture on America’s stance toward the independence of Taiwan. Xi warned Trump that war between China and the U.S. might be on the table if we try to stop China’s takeover of Taiwan. Trump answered with silence, basically.
No major announcement of any sort of deal or agreement was aired by either China or the U.S. after the two days of talks. Trump in his remarks, both with Fox’s Sean Hannity and at a luncheon with Xi yesterday, claimed that Xi had agreed that the Strait of Hormuz should be a free waterway and that Iran should never have a nuclear weapon. Nothing confirming that statement was ever issued by anyone in China.
In short, then, Trump went to highly orchestrated meetings with his two most potent world rivals in the stretch of a year, thinking that they would end wars that he couldn’t — one a war his good friend Putin started, the other a war he started himself. In both cases, Trump walked away empty-handed.
I searched whitehouse.gov today to find a wrap-up of the Trump visit, and what did I find? A story highlighting how a body-language expert, who watched the interactions between the two leaders on TV, said Trump was not “intimidated” by Xi and his formidable ensemble of supporters. The story states:
“I think that Trump feels the power, feels like this is a formidable meeting. He is not intimidated by Xi at all. He’s showing, kind of like a peacock or a lion, he’s showing his power,” Lillian Glass, a Florida-based body language expert who has served as an expert witness in federal and state courts on behavioral analysis, told The New York Post.
The opening line on the official White House story is revealing. “He’s king of the jungle,” the wrap-up begins. Wow, we have a president who is a lion on the world stage, even though Trump’s prediction that Xi would give him a “big bear hug” when they met turned out to be way off base.
From what I saw and heard on TV, I’d say Xi was the lion. To wit: the only lasting world media summary of the trip is that of Xi warning Trump and the U.S. about the “Thucydides Trap,” which of course almost no one ever heard of before this trip. The trap analogy refers to an emerging power inevitably ending up in war with a reigning power, just as Athens and Sparta did in the Thucydides reference.
Some bear hug, more like a bear saying getting out of my territory.
