KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The Trump–Xi summit (May 2026) was historic precisely because nothing happened; no breakthroughs, no major deals, just a “stabilization” framework, signalling the U.S. lacks leverage to dictate terms to China.
- China won the 2025 trade war; the U.S. imposed tariffs, failed, and effectively retreated, undermining its negotiating position heading into the summit.
- The Iran war backfired badly; Trump hoped military success there would strengthen his hand with Xi; instead, Iran emerged more powerful, controlling the Strait of Hormuz, with 90% of missile sites intact.
- Beijing set the terms, rhetorically and substantively; China provided the summit’s defining framework (“constructive strategic stability”), rejected Trump’s “G-2” framing, and its official readout omitted U.S. priorities like fentanyl and agricultural commitments.
- Taiwan signals shifted noticeably; Trump publicly questioned U.S. capacity to defend Taiwan, citing geographical distance, which China immediately amplified.
- The Thucydides Trap framing is misleading; it is Graham Allison’s concept, not Thucydides’, and functions rhetorically to normalise expectations of U.S.–China conflict.
- Rubio’s 2025 multipolar warning proved self-defeating; his description of China viewing the U.S. as a power in “inevitable decline” now reads as accurate analysis, not a warning to refute.
Heralded with much Trumpian pomp before the event, the May 2026 summit between President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China and Donald Trump of the United States of America in Beijing was widely described as a “stabilization summit” rather than a transformational breakthrough. What happened there? Not much, really. And this is precisely why this is big news.
Strategic aims of late memory which have joined the choir invisible
Let us take a step back. The 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States of America under Trump I forms a watershed moment due to the formal admission that the world we inhabit is now one of Great Power Competition rather than a unipolar, U.S.-led, destined-to-be-liberal-democracy-all-over-the-place one, which we might call “globalisation with American characteristics.” The 2017 NSS did not mince words: “after being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned. China and Russia began to reassert their influence regionally and globally. Today, they are fielding military capabilities designed to deny America access in times of crisis and to contest our ability to operate freely in critical commercial zones during peacetime. In short, they are contesting our geopolitical advantages and trying to change the international order in their favour.” Under Trump II, the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America somehow manages to mention China 21 times in 29 pages, although in a less obtusely truculent way, focusing on the U.S.–China economic relationship instead, aiming to “rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence” and hoping that “trade with China should be balanced and focused on non-sensitive factors” while “maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.” One presumes this heralds the tariff-centric2025 U.S.–China Trade War — one which, according to most analysts, the U.S. decisively lost and then proceeded to abandon, for all intents and purposes.
An alternative history of the itinerary to the summit
The 2017 NSS under Trump I started with a bang: “three main sets of challengers — the revisionist powers of China and Russia, the rogue states of Iran and North Korea, and transnational threat organizations, particularly jihadist terrorist groups — are actively competing against the United States and our allies and partners.”
Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. What became of this in the long meantime?
Russia is certainly not losing, and for all intents and purposes is winning, its long war in Ukraine, a war the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defined in March 2025 as a U.S.–Russia war: “frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers, the United States, helping Ukraine, and Russia.” By the same logic of the U.S. Secretary of State, the United States was defeated in what Rubio calls a U.S.–Russia war, hence the U.S. has partially retreated, leaving Ukraine in the mercy of Europeans and the Russians invested in what they see as a game of patience until Ukraine’s leadership, bereft of proper and full transatlantic support, implodes.
China faced a U.S.-imposed trade war in 2025. It failed, and the trade war was lost. China won. It may now stay calm and carry on.
North Korea is in a state of serenity, or rather geopolitical blessedness: possessing nuclear weapons and the intercontinental ballistic capacity to use them against the U.S. with dubious interception prospects if openly threatened, no one is in any mood to challenge the country; it may stay calm and carry on.
Jihadist terrorist groups? These are now crowned and enthroned in Syria with American blessing, and Ahmed al-Sharaa, erstwhile Emir of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Emir of Al-Nusra Front of al-Qaida pedigree under his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, is now triumphantly received in the White House.
And we are left with Iran; it is from here that an alternative history of the itinerary to the summit unfolds. Following his Venezuelan adventures, President Trump would swiftly effect regime change in Iran, or perhaps “obliterate” the country altogether; after this, he would meet the Chinese president and announce to him that the rules of the game have changed. Following decisive American victories in Venezuela (of minor importance) and in Iran (of extreme importance), Trump’s Chinese counterpart would have to acquiesce to cooperate with the United States on the basis of these newly carved realities.
Yet Goddess Fortune had different plans. As was rather obvious before the Iran war itself, things could go awry, and indeed did go awry. The war went abysmally bad, and is destined to go abysmally worse once it properly resumes; apart from murdering officials, nothing of substance was achieved. Rather than regime change, a younger Ayatollah Khamenei replaced the reposed 86-years-old Ayatollah Khamenei as Leader of the Islamic Revolution; not only does Iran retain its enriched uranium, but it now also controls the Strait of Hormuz, without inflicting oil-related pain on China, for whom the Strait remains effectively open. Just before the summit, it was revealed that 90% of Iran’s missile sites remain intact according to the New York Times. American experts such as Robert A. Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, foresee Iran turning into a major world power as a consequence of the U.S./Israeli war on the country (i.e., due to the new status quo on the Strait of Hormuz enabled by Iran’s resilience). Robert Kagan — the Robert Kagan, the arch-hawk that is co-founder of Project for the New American Century, brother of Frederick Kagan, and last but not least the husband of Victoria Nuland — speaks of checkmate in Iran and American defeat, underscores that “Washington can’t reverse or control the consequences of losing this war,” notes that “the global adjustment to a post-American world is accelerating,” and concludes that “America’s once-dominant position in the Gulf is just the first of many casualties.” Can it get worse? Yes indeed: The New York Times, BBC and CNBC publish ominous news on the U.S.’ Iran-related inflation rise.
The Trump–Xi summit was initially scheduled for April 2026. Trump postponed it, in the hope that he would prevail in Iran before the summit would materialise. His hopes were ill-fated.
And it is thusly that we arrived at the Trump–Xi summit.
What really happened in Beijing?
Not much, if at all — and the details confirm precisely this.
The summit took place on 14–15 May 2026 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with Trump also receiving a private lunch and tea with Xi at his personal residence within the Forbidden City compound. The 43 hours of what CNBC described as “friendly gestures” and “high-stakes” pageantry produced a diplomatic framework and very little else.
The headline outcome was a jointly agreed formula: Xi announced that the two leaders had agreed to make “a constructive China–U.S. relationship of strategic stability” the new positioning of their relationship, a framework meant to provide strategic guidance for the next three years and beyond. This was Beijing’s formulation, not Washington’s. Earlier, Trump had attempted to frame the relationship via his “G-2” language on Truth Social; Beijing did not take up that vocabulary, and in March 2026, Wang Yi made the rejection explicit at the Two Sessions press conference, saying China did not subscribe to the logic of “major power co-governance.” In Beijing, it was China that provided the rhetorical formula — and the U.S. accepted it. As The Diplomat drily noted: “Trump attempted to define the relationship first; Beijing declined.”
On trade, the main American agenda items were, as one analyst put it, “Boeings, beef and beans.” Trump claimed that China agreed to buy 200 Boeing aircraft, and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the U.S. expects China to commit to purchasing billions of dollars of U.S. agricultural products; to get trade negotiations off on the right foot, China committed to allow the import of American beef. Yet even the Boeing number was a disappointment: it was much lower than the 500 planes Trump had floated before the summit, and Boeing shares fell 4% on Wall Street accordingly. The country’s last big order with Boeing was during Trump’s November 2017 trip to Beijing, when China agreed to buy 300 Boeing planes; relations soured after that, and Boeing orders from China dried up. Beyond the aircraft pledge, neither side issued many details on trade. By the time Trump left China on Friday, the Boeing deal was the only major deal that was announced — although the Chinese Foreign Ministry declined to confirm even that.
On Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, the issue Trump had hoped to brandish as leverage, Trump left Beijing with only a vague commitment from China — to which the Strait is already very much open indeed — to pressure Iran to lift its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Both sides agreed that Iran may not possess a nuclear weapon, which incidentally is something that Iran also agrees to, and agreed to all along.
On Taiwan, Xi reserved his sharpest language, calling it “the most important issue in U.S.–China relations” and warning it could lead to ‘clashes and even conflict’ if not handled properly. In a Fox News interview taped in Beijing, Trump said he would like things between China and Taiwan to “stay the same,” and remarked: “You know, when you look at the odds, China is a very, very powerful, big country. That’s a very small island. Think of it, it’s 59 miles away. 59 miles. We’re 9,500 miles away. That’s a little bit of a difficult problem.” China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi subsequently declared that Beijing “sensed during the meeting that the U.S. side understands China’s position and attaches importance to China’s concerns, and, like the international community, does not support or accept Taiwan moving toward independence.”
China’s official statements completely omitted mention of fentanyl precursor flows and specific commitments to U.S. agricultural purchases, both of which were highlighted by the U.S. as key discussion points. Beijing maintained its position that it has already done enough regarding fentanyl and framed trade only in general, mutually beneficial terms. The U.S. framed the involvement of American CEOs as a substantive commercial engagement, whereas the Chinese readout diminished their role, framing the meeting as a mere courtesy introduction where Trump asked leaders to present themselves to Xi.
The overall verdict from outside observers was unambiguous. From a U.S. perspective, the immediate outcome was meagre: no grand breakthrough, but a mere stabilization of relations and a broad effort to prevent the superpower rivalry from spiralling further out of control. “You don’t get the sense that much has been accomplished,” said Helmut Brandstätter, a liberal Member of the European Parliament from Austria who is well connected with Chinese diplomats. The Washington Post was blunter still: there were no big breakthroughs but also no blunders, and the summit positioned Xi Jinping as a leader at the height of his power, seeking global stability, while allowing him, in the Post’s framing, to ease tensions with Trump without giving ground. The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer was more acerbic: “Spare a moment, please, for the lame-duck superpower. It calls itself the leader of the free world, but the free world no longer believes it. When it extends its hand, nobody rushes to accept. When it threatens, nobody trembles. […] In the end, Xi offered nothing of great substance — no solutions to the war in Iran, no sweeping trade deals, no promises of access to rare earth minerals. Xi used the visit to humour the lame-duck president, waiting for his time to pass.”
Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a non-resident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, aptly summed all this up:
- “Yes, Trump and Xi had a summit;
- No, not much happened at the summit;
- In 2026, we should be grateful for an event involving Trump in which not much happens.”
The summit was historic, precisely because nothing really happened. Among other things, this signals the U.S.’ lack of capacity to dictate terms and to shape reality, insofar as China is concerned (rather than poor Maduro in the U.S.’ backyard). The U.S. may either play along with the currently unfolding global reality and acquiesce to it, or blow everything up via a self-inflicted WWIII, which always remains a possibility.
Avoiding the Thucydides Trap — and avoiding mentioning it for the umpteenth time, please!
It would be a vain exercise to try and count the times the phrase “Thucydides Trap” appeared in international media analyses these days. After all, it is President Xi himself who asked rhetorically, and also asked President Trump, “Can China and the United States transcend the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new paradigm for major-power relations?” It’s not the first time, of course: the Chinese president had also remarked during his 2015 state visit to the United States while meeting Barack Obama that “there is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.”
The first thing to note about the Thucydides Trap is that, for all intents and purposes, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Thucydides and his history of the Peloponnesian War. It is Graham Allison, Professor of Government at Harvard Kennedy School, who came up with the phrase, popularised it, and later wrote a book on it, claiming that his own reflections, ideas, approaches, and projections harken back to Thucydides’ wisdom. Calling Graham Allison’s ideas on the U.S.–China competition Thucydides Trap certainly lends credence and a certain august aura to the concocted and indeed very American concept Allison came up with, but this does not change the fact that there is little that is actually Thucydidean in it. In essence, and brutally oversimplifying a much more nuanced argument, the Graham Allison Trap prepares the Western and American imaginary and public discourse for an “inevitable” U.S.–China war, under the pacifist guise that it is not inevitable if we actually work hard to prevent it.
Yet President Xi, in his repeated references to the Graham Allison Trap, does not simply signal that China does not want and does not need any war with the U.S. Hidden in the pacifist rhetoric, an emphatic recommendation to the U.S. is articulated: now that the power balance is changing radically and has already shifted, the United States should stay in its lane and enjoy the privileges that history and geography have endowed it with, without remaining fixated on a global hegemony that is destined not to return, since this fixation cannot but engender a war that would be catastrophic for the U.S. as well. If, just as Athens once warred with Sparta, the implication in in Allison’s take is that China’s rise provokes anxiety and potential conflict with the U.S., then the United States should better stay in its lane, abandon megalomaniac ambitions incommensurate with its current trajectory, and — to use the present piece’s favourite phrase — keep calm and carry on.
President Xi spoke of “constructive strategic stability,” translated into plain American English as “we’ll smile, call you a friend, extend a very warm reception, and continue to do our thing; you would be well-advised not to meddle in our affairs, stay calm, and carry on with your predetermined historical trajectory, which we explicitly consider an inauspicious one.“” Trump acquiesced, and then proceeded to tell Taiwan not to nurture unrealistically high hopes of U.S. assistance in any remaining aspirations for independence.
The Graham Allison Trap is not Thucydides Trap. Yet, just for the sake of argument, what would Thucydides’ Trap actually look like? What would Thucydides advise the United States, were he a trapper in our midst? Partly inspired by Dimitris B. Peponis’ readings of Thucydides, we arrived at something which, paradoxically, might be more Thucydidean than the Graham Allison Trap, perhaps. All errors are our own — even if the whole thing is an error:
Thucydides Trap
[Intro]
Yeah.
Thucydides speaking.
Not from Harvard — from the ruins.
Listen carefully, America;
for my rhymes and beats are κτῆμα ἐς αἰεί
[Verse 1]
You quote Melos like it’s scripture in a senate hall,
“The strong do what they can” — then stop before the fall.
But fools recite the line and never read the ending,
Hubris got receipts and Time collect the debt with interest pending.
Athens spoke like markets, carriers, ratings agencies,
Called empire “order,” called tribute “security.“”
Every hegemon rename dominion as defence,
Till allies start hearing chains inside the rhetoric.
Corinth told the Greeks:
“Friendship follow victory.”
States switch camps fast when survival shape the liturgy.
No permanent allies, only pressure and position,
That’s realism — not slogans for a television mission.
You left your friends exposed, now they searching other patrons,
Then call them “traitors” when they pivot from your sanctions.
But treaties break first when the guarantor retreat,
Power writes the oath — weakness tear the paper sheets.
[Hook]
Fear. Honor. Interest.
Still govern every state.
But hubris plant the tyrant and invite a darker fate.
You can rule for a season, make the whole world kneel,
But Time is undefeated and Nemesis is real.
This ain’t liberal dreams, this ain’t moral theater,
This the cold logic underneath every world leader.
Empires die convinced they still control the storm,
Then wake up one day finding history transformed.
[Verse 2]
Mytilene watched Athens slowly change its face,
From liberating Greeks to managing a prison state.
Started with protection, ended with extraction,
That’s how maritime empires drift toward contradiction.
“We joined you for freedom” — then the freedom got rationed,
Every alliance equal till one side got advantage.
Once fear fade, empire seek profit from the route,
Then the allies look around like: “Who gon’ save us now?”
You got fleets in every sea lane, bases near every shore,
Then ask why rivals building missiles by the score.
Security dilemma — tragic, not absurd,
Every shield look like a sword depending where observed.
And don’t mistake restraint for weakness in transition,
A rising power move patient when it trust the long position.
China read your system like Corinth read the tide,
Knowing overstretched powers decay from the inside.
[Hook]
Fear. Honor. Interest.
That triangle still spin.
But the fatal flaw of empires is believing they can’t dim.
The strong impose today till the balance rearrange,
Then yesterday’s dominion become tomorrow’s chains.
[Bridge]
You thought the trap was war between the old and new,
Nah — the trap is when a fading power can’t face the truth.
Athens didn’t fall because the gods were unfair,
Athens fell believing force exempted it from measure.
Sicily wasn’t madness — it was arrogance normalized,
Applause drowning out strategic decline.
Democracies intoxicated by prestige and reach
Always call expansion “peace.”
[Verse 3]
So hear me, Washington, before the cycle tighten:
The sea power always fear another horizon rising.
But wisdom ain’t dominance stretched beyond capacity,
Wisdom is surviving history without insanity.
Corinth understood alliances built on utility,
Sparta understood limits, Athens worshipped ability.
And every age repeat the pattern with new flags,
New currencies, new drones, same ambitions in the bag.
You sanction half the planet, call it “international law,”
But law without balance just accelerate revolt.
The more coercion used to preserve declining primacy,
The faster multipolarity harden into reality.
[Final Hook]
Hubris plant the tyrant — Hesiod said it clean,
Then Dike walk behind him unseen.
Nemesis ain’t magic, she move through Time itself,
Turning mighty empires into studies on a shelf.
So quote Melos fully, not selectively for pride.
The strong rule briefly.
Time rules all sides.
[Outro]
The powerful of the past
Become the weak of the present.
The powerful of the present
Become the weak of the future.
That is the law above empires.
Clearly I spoke and I am not for blames,
Thucydides drops the mic in flames.
Now we can all agree we are grateful there was no trap music in the time of Thucydides.
Secretary Rubio was spot on, in spite of himself
Let’s return to 2025. American Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave an important interview upon assuming office in January 2025 — an interview which still reverberates today, with its famous “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power, that was an anomaly” multipolar quote. In it, he explained: “China’s perception of the world is that they are inevitably going to be the world’s greatest power by 2035, 2050. Whatever date they’ve set in their mind, they believe that they are on an irreversible rise and we are in inevitable decline, that the West at large, but the U.S. in specific, is a tired, spent, former great power in inevitable decline. And they believe the foreign policy is about managing our decline and their rise, and they want nothing to interrupt it. That’s how they view the West writ large and the United States in particular.”
The assumption behind the reference was that President Donald J. Trump will prove the Chinese wrong.
He did not.
And he does not look like he’ll prove them wrong anytime soon.
In light of all this, Secretary Rubio’s words seem to stand today as an accurate and precise depiction of our world — rather than of China’s erroneous perception of it.
And the proof is indeed in the pudding. What could possibly qualify Secretary Rubio’s words more eloquently than a Trump-Xi summit in which nothing of real consequence really happens — in which, that is, the ascending power is simply trying to mind its own business while successfully keeping the old hegemon calm, pliant and, if remotely possible, pleasant?
In this case, no news is big news, to those that have eyes to see.
* Sotiris Mitralexis holds a doctorate in political science and international relations; he works at University College London as a research fellow.