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Not so long ago, it would have been inconceivable to imagine Donald Trump, she, Jinping and Vladimir Putin sitting around a table together, but no longer after President Trump said he was open to trilateral talks. The three leaders may all meet in China next month. Should the world fear or celebrate a potential Trump Putin? She love him? I'm David Rennie, the economist geopolitics editor, and welcome to Inside Geopolitics.
And with me is a stellar panel. We got Edward Carr, the economist, deputy editor, Adam Roberts, our foreign editor, and Arkady Ostrovsky, our Russia editor. Hello, all of you. Hi. Hello. So we've got these three leaders potentially meeting. What does that mean, the significance of that. And then we're going to look at each of their individual kind of pairings and relationships. And finally I think we need to ask whether this loving is the start of a new world order. Or maybe it just sort of fizzles out. So let's start by listening to America's secretary of State, Marco Rubio,
I think, signaling that he gets why people are startled about this meeting. People need to grow up when it comes to foreign policy a little bit. Okay. It is. I don't think it's unusual for the three most powerful nuclear armed nations on Earth for their leaders to communicate with one another. I think it makes all the sense in the world. So, you know, as ever, Marco Rubio suggests that if you disagree with him, you're being had a baby ish. But let's move on for the kind of the straw Manning editor, I guess.
First things first, there is actually a question mark about whether they will meet because unlike Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, XI Jinping plays his cards close to his chest. Chinese communist leader. He hasn't actually said he is open to something. But what do you make of Marco Rubio's assertion that this is just all the sense in the world for them to be? Yeah, David, that's true. Whether it's going to happen. I mean, the Chinese spokesman has said they have no information about it, but there are rumors in Beijing that they've been sort of keeping bits of the agenda free on the periphery of the APEC summit.
So they may it may amount to something. I mean, I and one part of me thinks it's great if world leaders talk to each other. There are plenty of things to talk about. And Donald Trump's spoken about a nuclear agenda. It would be fantastic if China were to begin talking to Russia and America about nuclear disarmament. But there's another part of me that gets quite worried because these summits can be ambushes. And I think Donald Trump is underprepared, typically. And also I'm not quite sure of his intent. So it's a kind of combination of yeah, great.
But also alarm, Adam, should we see this as kind of the beginning of a whole new kind of dawn of détente, or is this something quite fragile, quite temporary, you think? Well, on the market, Rubio point, I think maybe he needs to grow up a little bit and understand that we're not just talking about communication. We're not just talking about countries talking to each other. The suggestion with this idea of a New Yorker or this getting together of the three leaders, is a lot more than communication.
It's about coming to some sort of alignment of interest and values and squeezing out others who might have interest there as well. I personally don't think it's going to go very far. I suspect that even if they do sit down in the same room, it won't amount to very much, but it's deeply worrying for those who are not invited to this meeting to see it going ahead. Yeah, that's a very good point about the signal that sends. We've seen President Trump, and I think Marco Rubio is saying that, you know, it's about nuclear arms control talks.
Do you buy that? Latimer. Putin is ready to talk about arms control nuclear arms control. Oh absolutely I think I can with a qualifier I totally ready to buy that. It's going to be good to talk about nuclear. What it will amount to is a different matter. And I think you just need to look at what their kind of each of their agendas are. I agree actually very much with Adam is as meaningful as who is going to be there is as who's not going to be there. So the idea for Putin, the idea that he's talking to superpowers, you know, boosts his status.
He always want to talk about nuclear because that's where Russia has a superiority of others. And there's kind of a this Yalta table which actually exists in his head. And this is kind of a new world order. It helps him and it helps him just in as much in keeping the Europeans out of it. At the time when he's doing Ukraine for Trump, I think it's also very performative. He also would love to talk about nuclear, because he actually doesn't have much to show in a way of what's happening in Ukraine. So to say that my major victory is in preventing nuclear war, saving the world from the world war, this is I think
it's going to be a lot of it is rhetoric, but rhetoric has consequences. And to your point, that you could imagine Trump being just as pleased as Putin, that you say, who's not there? The Europeans aren't there. Vladimir Zelenskyy, the leader of Ukraine, is not there. And I personally, on the China thing, the Chinese have never shown any willingness to talk about Chinese arms control. The crimes control as long as they have a smaller arsenal and everyone else. But let's pick up on our colleagues mention of Yalta.
You know, that big post-Second World War meeting where the Iron Curtain is basically kind of goes down the middle of Europe? Stalin, Churchill, FDR draw up this kind of plan for postwar order. Why are people making that comparison? Is it reasonable? I mean, you know, well, I think it's I mean, in one level, it's a sort of highly inflated, self-important sense of these three people who are stride the world. But I think there's another ironic way in which it might be like,
because it was where Stalin basically came out on top and managed to carve out Eastern Europe as part of Russia as a satellite of Russia. Vladimir Putin would love to do that with Ukraine. So there's a kind of ironic sense in which it might be altered and not a good one. There's another way in which it's an ironic sense. It's like you're to you had an American president back in 1945 who didn't understand the threat that came from the Soviet Union.
Today, you have an American president who doesn't understand the threat that comes from that. I would disagree, I think both church on the historic point. I think both Churchill and Result stood very well that what the threat was and the Soviet Union having nuclear arms by that time, or certainly on the way, I think in the one way in which it's not a Yalta is that the world is not a Yalta kind of world. I mean, the Soviet Union could keep its spheres of influence by occupying, with millions of soldiers occupying countries of Eastern Europe. And that was the deal that came back, you know, came off on the back of the Second World War,
in which the Soviet Union lost. But, I mean, Roosevelt made a bad trade at Yalta. He thought getting Soviet membership of the UN would be a major constraint on, on and it turned out not to be. Actually, the occupation of Eastern Europe turned out to be much more important. And ultimately, you know what we need to remember about when we go down to lots of historical parallels. But for Eastern Europe, it was their fate being sealed by these three leaders without them at the table. I guess that's that's the resonance. And pull it to the present day. This idea that you can get these three leaders in between them,
they can carve the world up into spheres of influence or even kind of cut deals. So, Adam, can I ask you about, you know, this week we may get another kind of run at new candidates for the UN secretary general job. Now, you can argue about how important that job is in 2026. But nonetheless, when I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, diplomats there were talking about their shock at the way that America, China and Russia with this new kind of P3 making the running. And we see rumors in the papers that maybe they think Viktor Orban, the defeated prime minister of Hungary, would be a just a peachy candidate for the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese to impose on everyone else.
Now, what are we really saying when we're having these kind of discussions about these kind of grubby deals being cooked up? Well, I think you're right to say that who is the secretary general of the UN probably doesn't matter that much, but it does sort of capture the moment, doesn't it? It captures here's a battle for the great powers, including Russia, trying to stitch up and exclude those who felt, for example, that it might be the turn of the global south of South America
or of other parts of the world to have the name at the top of the UN. There are other names doing the rounds apart from Viktor Orban, but certainly what we've read today is that the likes of Viktor Orban, someone who is malleable, someone who can be influenced by the US, influenced by the Russians, would be an ideal candidate to lead the UN. But it is important. I mean, Victorians a terrible man, but it is important that whoever ends up running the UN, if the UN's have any influence at all, does at least have the ear of the countries that really matter.
Because if the United States, Russia and China mean to ignore the UN, nothing at all will happen. Let's move to the different couples in this triangle. So we have Russia, China, America. And let's start with America and Russia. In the past few weeks, we've seen President Trump agree to by Russian diesel. He's waiving sanctions on Russian energy. Back to very harsh comments about Ukraine. And we had his special envoy, Steve Wycoff, for the nth time in Moscow meeting President Putin. Let's just remind ourselves about that conversation and the latest remarkable accolade that Mr. Wycoff bestowed upon President Putin.
You talk so much about my present President Trump being the humanitarian you are. Are you also, sir? And I salute that. And I commend you. And I thank you again. How do you feel watching that? That's pretty shocking. I have to say, even by the standards of all this, I mean, obviously the man who is, as those words are being uttered, is sending off missiles to attack civilians inside. Ukraine is not a humanitarian. But what I think is interesting, and what I think we should talk about is to kind of get behind this and ask what?
What could be going on here? What's the explanation for this behavior. Because you see a lot of them made and two strike me not because I endorse them, but because they're worth debating. The first is a belief in Trump and his circle that in order to be able to try and create any distance at all between Russia and China, you need to have peace in Ukraine first. Until you get peace in Ukraine, it's really impossible to start build that relationship and that it is in America's interest to have a better relationship with Russia.
The second, shorter term thing is something we heard from a well-placed Russian source recently, which is that part of what Putin is offering Trump is intercession with Iran in order to lean on Iran in order to get some sort of deal. And it is true that Trump is desperate to find out a way out of that war with Iran and has tried all sorts of things. So, I mean, you can just say, this is stupidity. You can just say, this is cupidity if you think that it's all about kind of making money. But I think we ought to address whether we feel that there is anything more substantial to it at all.
I guess we need to divide that into two parts, because, you know, there's always this kind of idea that he's playing some brilliant game of kind of demonic chess. The bit that I have to say doesn't make much sense to me is that you can peel Russia and China apart. I think the bit that he's wooing Russia, because he thinks there's things that Putin can help him with, whether it's lowering the price of the pump or, you know, in Iran, that makes some sense. But how is this scene in Russia by Russians, this latest kind of warming and the wooing and the Wyckoff kind of visit is the scene as a turning point of any sort?
No, I don't think so. And by the way, on the humanitarian point, I completely agree with that. This two are talking to each other, you know, president of Russia. And through Wyckoff, Trump with complete disregard for people not just of Ukraine but also of people in Russia. Now, in terms of how people in Russia see this, I think they've lost faith in Trump. I think there was a moment, a very important moment in public attitudes to the war in the public opinion. In 2025, when Trump appeared on the scene as kind of Dex McKenna in a sense that because the conflict was so stuck, there was a hope
that there was some external force, you know, would come and help solve it. And the disappointment started after that. So I think he's now, you know, there's been a lot of polling on Trump in Russian public. And he is now seen as, yeah, he's not as America has lost its place as an arch enemy that's been replaced by Europe. So he's not an arch enemy, but he is a businessman. He's not very reliable. He'll let us down. So that's how he's seen in public. In terms of the elites, I think they see it for all it is.
They don't see Putin trying to engage. I mean, the interesting thing for me here is that a Putin can't really deliver Iran. B Putin benefits from high oil prices in the closure of moose straits. So I don't think Putin has much to deliver. I mean, Putin needs Trump for two reasons. One, and that's the absolutely short term, immediate objective. He needs to cut Ukraine off from European aid. He needs to cut off from the US aid, he needs to isolate it, and he needs Trump to deliver what he can't achieve militarily on the battlefield.
That's why he needs Trump. The second thing, bigger thing, which is what I'm even more worried about, is what Adams started saying is that Europeans are not there because I think this deal is underneath. It is Putin's resentment of Europe. He is now Europe is the arch enemy and Trump's contempt for Europe as well. And it's actually two man doing a deal at the cost of America's allies. So can I pick up on something just before we go back to Ed and Adam? Because, you know, Ed mentions all the kind of the brilliant sort of 5G chess theories that he's recruiting Putin for, his geopolitical kind of large range, whether it's dealing with the Chinese, whether it's dealing with Iran.
But you've just described something very much more parochial to do with the war in Ukraine, to do with dividing the supporters of Ukraine, to do with his kind of fight with Europe as this kind of liberal threat on his borders. Is that what is that your real sense that Putin is not actually thinking about? Can I help him in Iran? What does he want from me as a world leader? This is all about Ukraine. No, Ukraine is not just about Ukraine. Ukraine is about Russia and the West, Russia and Europe.
Ukraine is about remaking of the security architecture and the world order. That's what's Ukraine. And this has now been completely conceptualized like that, both by the elites and the population. Ukraine is just where it happens. So Ukraine is important for his own political games, for his own political goals. But actually it's bigger than that. Ukraine as part of this, this peace in the middle of Europe and Russia coming to dominate Europe, a split Europe. And it's about control over Europe. So it's about the world order.
It's about the security which he destroyed the post-Cold War. So that's what for Putin, it's about is both about the immediate effects in Ukraine, and it's about what this will mean for, for the West. And Adam should Europeans worry that this is that Trump is somehow buying into this realignment, this kind of anti-liberal European? I think the Europeans should realize they're stronger than they've been for a long time, and they can actually force quite a lot of what's happening here.
They've shown in the past year that they can support Ukraine. They can support it with the €90 billion that they've promised. They've got more money that they can follow that with. They've shown that they are taking it much more seriously, that they can support Ukraine militarily. And Ukraine itself has shown how powerful it is. I think we've passed the time where Trump and Putin can just do some sort of deal over Europe's head and get away with it.
I think Europe is stronger than it's been for a long time. So do you that confident? I think as Adam says, as Americans support for Ukraine has fallen so that its ability to influence Ukraine has become more and more kind of binary. In other words, it's now thinking about putting pressure on, let's say, by cutting Starlink or by cutting intelligence. It can't tighten the screws slightly. It's not calibrated. It's very, very dramatic. And I also think that each time this happens, we see that the resistance within the United States, particularly in the Senate, even after the death of Lindsey Graham to Trump, literally throwing
Ukraine away, there is resistance to that. And it's actually quite hard for him to sustain. So I am slightly reassured, actually. It's very frightening and very disturbing when something like this happens, but I think it's quite hard for him to just junk Ukraine. So let me be devil's advocate or Putin's advocate. You know what he's saying? You know, in the Kremlin is he's seeing Paris flame. He sees the yes, you're right. He would argue economically Europe is larger, economically it's more powerful. But is it able to bear the same cost that he can impose on his people?
So he's seeing the, you know, the, the brewing of the discontent. He is seeing the fiscal crisis. He is seeing, you know, he is listening to I'm sure he is listening to his interview with Alice Vidal saying, we're going to stop all support of Ukraine. He's seeing what's happening in Europe. And he is saying it's just that bit more. He's also going to see in the midterms next week where Donald Trump is probably going to have a bloody nose, and he's going to see that the Republicans that Ed talks about will be invigorated after the midterms in the Senate. Probably Trump will have a much harder path ahead. That's true. But he is still testing.
Can the European publics bear the same cost? I think that's right. I want to make one more point in this, which is that Donald Trump is helping Putin in what he says. By each time this comes back, he's more and more front loading the deal to give Russia the benefits. And so if the dynamics of this war are determined by who thinks that time is on their side, every Trump intervention, I think, helps Putin believe that time is on his side, even though I also think that actually the resistance within the United States to just throwing Ukraine away is greater than we might.
Just before we turn to other pairings, I just want to finish by, you know, we're dealing with the Trump administration, so we should never forget to talk about money. And here we are talking about high geo strategy. But there's also cash to be made. Right. And so these central claims certainly when Wycoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow is that there's these fabulous energy deals that Russia could sign with America. Ed are those deals as fabulous as some seem to think on the Trump side? I mean, potentially they're very big indeed. Yeah. I can't see why they shouldn't be. The thing is that the some of them involve the Europeans buying gas from an energy from Russia.
I suspect there's quite a lot of resistance there. The Europeans are still buying some of that, but they want to try and reduce it as much as possible. So I mean, there are complications. I think it would be meet with enormous, enormous controversy and rejection inside the United States. If that was the basis of this. Let's turn to America and China again. I think one of the shocks of the second Trump administration has been just how very different the rhetoric is from the first term, and actually the actions to, you know, we're no longer trying to change China.
There's no longer some criticism of China's business model, its model. And we're only just over a month since she and Trump met in Washington. And that was a really empty sort of protocol ish meeting. They just extended their economic truth truce a little bit longer. And I have to say, some of the closest observers of that US China relationship, they're pretty skeptical about how willing China is to kind of reset completely with Donald Trump. So for this show last month, I spoke to Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, and actually a genuine, really serious China scholar. Let's see what he said about how the Chinese view their relationship with America.
The Chinese lens on the strategic competition with the United States is absolutely crystal clear. A it's on whatever the Chinese public language may be about win cooperation. It is a deeply competitive relationship for which the object is which power, which country emerges as the predominant power in the Indo-Pacific and globally during the course of the 21st century. Secondly, their deep analytical take of where the United States is going, their conclusion is that China is rising in the United States is falling and listening to that.
How do you think that shapes what you know, what the Chinese ambitions for the Trump era might be? I mean, I find that completely persuasive, I have to say, and I think that's the way to see the foundations of the relationship. That's always what's really going on. And the rest of the stuff is kind of mood diversion helps you get through the next six months. So, I mean, I find Kevin totally persuasive, which means that the scope for real progress on detente or real progress on this and that, you know, I don't think it's really there. It's it's good if there isn't a threat to an outbreak of war or hostilities, that's all worth having. But I don't think it's much more than that. Yeah.
I mean, I guess, you know, you can certainly that to the point about the East is rising in the West is declining. If you can, if you can get Donald Trump to say ridiculous things or things that break the heart of his Asian allies, then that's that's a tangible whit. That's a win, right? If you get him to say that Taiwan, you know, the US is against Taiwanese independence, that's a win. There are things like that. But how bankable that is in the long run. They don't believe for a minute that he binds any future American administration. So you've mentioned Taiwan.
Adam, how worried do you think Taiwan should be that there's a if there's this next round of meetings, two more meetings, we think between XI and Trump. Well, there's one really obvious cost to any of these meetings, however empty they might be when they actually take place. You mentioned the Washington one being mostly about what was on the menu for the dinner, but one of the concepts and the helicopter landing pad that was very important to you.
Turns out that she Jinping, is a great expert in granite. I think he told us that's crucial to know that indifferent. But one of the real costs of having these summits is that for Taiwan, they want to get this $14 billion arms deal through Congress. And Trump is refusing to push this forward because he rather witless, says, oh, this is a great bargaining chip for me to use against in my negotiations with the Chinese. And therefore I'm not going to progress with this. Well, if you're Taiwan and you want to buy radar systems, Patriot missiles and so on. That's being blocked because of Trump's desire to have these summits with She Jinping, the second group of people who should be worried about what's going on, of course,
are the neighbors of Taiwan, the likes of Japan, Korea and others in the region. Who can see that? What Trump is saying about Taiwan, he could very soon be saying about them as well. Yeah, that kind of a model is very uncomfortable in Asia to Arkady. You know, we sometimes here. I mean, I can't I lose track of how many people suddenly say, you know, various ambassadors of various China. Of course, now they're leverage over Ukraine or their leverage over Iran is fantastic. They are the ones who are going to sort out this problem. If only we can recruit them.
Do you see any kind of prospect that China could play peacemaker in a decisive way? Certainly with Ukraine, I don't think China has much interest in that. I think, you know, China stands and benefits. China sells chips and drone parts both to Russia and to Ukraine. I think in equal measure. That's why actually sanctions Secretary sanctions quite hard. I think the Chinese see, you know, they've always been distrustful of Russia, sort of Russia getting in that sense weaker is now a bad thing.
I don't think they will use this leverage. I don't think that and I don't think actually they have this leverage historically. I don't think that it works quite like this sitting ping calling Putin, saying, okay, enough already. You know, this is it. David, let me ask you though. I mean, when we were in China together, there was a lot of talk about how Chinese attitudes to the war in Iran would change.
Well, since then, we're now, what, few months on, it's come clear that Chinese reserves have been run down quite a lot, a continuation of the war especially, or intensification or not be good for China. Do you think China is willing to get involved? So I was actually just in the golf last week and talked about China a lot, and people never expected very much from China. I think they were quite correct not to expect too much, because the trick with China and identifying that they have an interest. So yes, they would like the Strait of Hormuz opened is that step one.
Step two is do they have other interests that come above that? And if you're China, regime change in Iran directed by America is far more horrifying than the cost of oil. So you are not going to help America. Well, why not push for a peace now? I mean, that was so good. So the specific I thought was one of the smartest comments I heard from someone Chinese who I trust on this. He said, look, here's the problem. The degree of pain that China would need to apply to Iran to really change the calculation.
The hardliners in Tehran would be regime imperiling pain, and China's not in the business of changing regimes at America's best. And so at that point, they'll take the hit of the Strait of Hormuz being closed, even if that's unpleasant. And that applies to Russia as well, actually, in terms of the regime, you know, the pain would have to inflict in terms of regime changing and dynamic in Russia. And that's why they would have even more careful to do that. Yeah. So let's talk about China and Russia. This, you know, the oldest of these pairings of this sort of three way loving that we're talking about today. So who knows whether she Jinping is capable of having a friend who knows whether has any actual friends.
But I have heard debates with an inside line claiming that she is as close as a foreign friend as it gets for Vladimir Putin. And certainly the relationship has been cordial, as far as we can tell. You know, they have they've spent birthdays together in the past. They've cooked pancakes together. They drank vodka together. But Cardi, how delighted is Russia to have this giant as its friend? And how kind of anxious are they about their increasing dependance on China? I mean, you have to define what Russia is in a way for that.
You know, we're talking about Putin now. We're talking about the elite are we're talking about the population. I think the common thread is probably apprehension at all levels and recognition of, of China's power. And I think the elites are very uncomfortable with the level of dependency. I think Putin might be actually quite uncomfortable with the level of, of, of dependency as well. China is an interesting kind of friend. So again, if you look at sentimental, yeah, it's very unsentimental. If you look at the again, the public opinions which have been done very recently. So Russia has two friends at the moment kind of generalizing them.
One is Belarus. That's a satellite state Lukashenko and one is C Jinping. And when you ask people saying, yeah, look, is a real friend because he depends on us thing, he's got his own things on his mind. You offer people a simple exercise. If Putin sits down to play chess with Trump, Putin wins. If Putin sits down to play chess with C, C wins. So it's kind of there is a apprehension, there is resentment, there is kind of uncomfortable stuff I think Putin you absolutely right. This doesn't cancel at all. The fact that Putin gets on with C very well and they've reminisced about their fathers so shared and the Second World War they found a revolution. So there is a personal kind of report.
But in terms of China could always turn away or China could do things which are not in Russia. And the two countries remember, they did fight. Actually, there was a military conflict between Russia and China in the 60s. Vast tracts of what used to be China are now Russia. They have not forgotten in China. Adam, how important is China's help for Russia's war machine, not least because, you know, we keep forgetting to mention the rest of the world, right?
Europeans, I think it's clear that European views of China have been very, very badly damaged, at least in some capitals, by Russia's reliance on parts for their drones, for their missiles, to causing such damage coming straight from Chinese factories into Vladimir Putin's war machine. How significant is that part of the. Well, you're right about the hostility. Europeans are turning against China, both for economic reasons and because of China's support for the war. The nature of that support is varied.
It's I referred to it, but sending in drone parts, sending in the sort of goods that are now under sanctions, so you can't easily access them directly. If you're Russia from European suppliers or American suppliers, you could of course, get them from the Chinese in return. The Chinese are getting an enormous insight as to how the future of wars will be fought. And so China is seeing from the battlefield how those drones are used and how the data is gathered, how the AI can be developed and improved upon to fight better in those wars. So China gets a lot out of this participation in the war in Ukraine as well. So it's not all one way traffic. And as Accardi has implied,
China also gets ever more leverage over Russia as Russia bleeds. And by the way, dependent on China, those companies that are selling drones to Russia, I mean, in a drone parts, sorry, drone parts to Russia, the way they stay out of sanctions, apparently, is they also sell those drone parts. It's the same company who sell drone parts to Ukraine. Yeah. In fact, the sanctions that Chinese envoys have told European envoys who I have spoken to, that when you push them too hard on the Russian dual use exports, they go, you really want us to enforce those controls because, you know, Ukraine relies on them too. That tells you a lot about China.
I think if you put this together, I think you do end up thinking that if the war, when the war finishes, Russia will be keen to move slightly away from China and slightly towards America. Why wouldn't you want to be able to increase your independence over China if you resent the fact that they're so powerful? So I don't think you know, the argument about, though I was making earlier, that part of the interest in getting a piece for the United States is to be able to help create this degree of separation, not complete break.
You're not going to get a Kissinger moment, but you could get a movement apart, which I think would benefit the United States. I think the problem with that, of course, is that, you know, it's a bit like, yes, you could probably get two Mafia bosses to fall out over the kind of the heroin trade in their city. But you're not going to start trading heroin yourself to get it done. And so, so many of the things you would need to do to drive them apart are so extraordinarily kind of grubby that just no peace alone would begin to do it. Because Putin, Putin depends for China so much right now because he's at war.
Yeah. So I agree with that. But let's test, you know, let's take an area where we see China and Russia actually have slightly kind of differing interests. So China's leverage over its very difficult nuclear arms neighbor, North Korea, has been lessened by the fact that North Korea now has an option as North Korea sends troops to help Russia with Ukraine war, there's buying more and more weapons. You see North Korean troops goose stepping through Red Square in Moscow. Actually, that's quite tricky for China because they're losing a bit of leverage over this very difficult neighbor.
Does that offer the kind of opportunity to drive wedges that Ed is talking about? Well, I don't know about North Korea. I mean, Putin, I'm sure, would like to have some leverage over China and whatever he has, and it's not very much. And it's an interesting thought about North Korea. I agree with that completely that the elites and, you know, if the war stops, yes, he is dependent. He is more dependent in China and has become more dependent on China since 2014, annexation of Crimea. That's when he turned to China.
Without Chinese support, Russian economy couldn't have, I don't think functioned at the moment. But and so there will be a move. They will want to move away and move back to Europe. I mean, you ask people what they identity is and people say, of course we're European. You know, we're not Chinese. I mean, it's obvious, but the only thing I would say is, is that it would be good for America.
It would be good for Europe to be good for Russia itself. I mean, post Putin, I think it's also something that Chinese are very aware of because I think they, at the back of their mind is exactly that threat that the Russians are not reliable. The first moment they will turn to the West, you know, when the window open, window of open. That's what I mean. You and you know this much better. But I do remember that conversations I had in Beijing was hanging. Yeah, but we cannot trust them. They will always look west as soon as they can. And therefore they're trying to infiltrate and hold technologically, financially, everything to make that rupture much harder than it would have been in the Soviet days.
David, you mentioned you referred to the Russian Far East and the fact that Chinese remember the Vladivostok was not originally called Vladivostok. And how much do you think that there is still some sort of Chinese design on that territory? I don't think they're about to fight a war over it. I mean, you know, China has, you know, quite a lot of empty land up in that corner. But, you know, it's not forgotten. It's cat. There is a kind of a card in the best description of the China Russia sort of relationship that I remember from my days in Beijing was there's these kind of Chinese martial arts novels where you have the two warriors surrounded by kind of a circle of demons,
and the warriors are back to backs with their swords out. And as one Chinese former PLA officer said, you know, why have you turn around and stab the other guy even if you don't like him, even if you don't fully trust him, because then you're going to be surrounded by demons on your own. Why would you do that to yourself? And I think that's kind of fundamentally their worldview. Before we turn to that kind of final discussion about kind of the New World order, you were talking about the post Ukraine opportunities. I just don't want to forget to ask Adam. We're still in the Ukraine war. And while we're talking about this kind of Russia part of it, the big frightening thing for Europe,
China, is that it's clear that its claims for neutrality are not real, that it wants that Putin, at a minimum, not to lose and maybe to win. How frightened should Europe be that actually, Donald Trump agrees that he also does not want Vladimir Putin to lose and maybe to win. I wouldn't suggest Europe should be frightened. I think we've got past the stage of being frightened. I think America is more than Trump. And we'll see after the midterms that America probably will evolve
to have a slightly different from policy, and we'll have to see what sort of foreign policy that will be. But I don't think the Europeans should be frightened that Trump is somehow they're really, really pushing for an absolute Putin victory in Ukraine. I think he wants the war to come to an end for various reasons, including the ones that aired, is elaborated. But I don't think it's necessarily that he wants to impose a Russian sort of victory on Ukraine. What really matters for the Europeans is to be stronger than selves, so they can't get pushed around in that way, and that they can fight harder to get the sort of outcome that they need in Ukraine, and they need it
more than America needs it, because it's existential for Europeans. In a way, it is not existential for the Americans and for that Europe needs both support for Ukraine, the money, you know, military, but also needs to have agency to talk to the Russians because that's that's the key thing, is that the, you know, the three certainly the three largest economies in Europe, I don't I'm not even talking about the EU need to also think about what their relationship with Russia is because that's dangerous. That's why, in a way Putin can go into that space. And in terms of, you know, it was look, it was Biden's original formula that Russia must not win and Ukraine must not lose.
And that's what sort of got us into this stalemate. And Europe needs to politically, I think, needs to gain agency in being able to talk to the Russian elite and the Russian people. Otherwise it's up to Trump or Whitcomb. So you're right to push us to think about the after Trump, the bigger picture, the fact that this comes began with Biden. Let's end by talking about the after Trump. So we're talking about this bizarre love in the idea of what might not be on the table if they do meet as a threesome.
How much of this is very Trump specific at how much? This just kind of goes away and we go back to something much more normal, something much cooler, more distant between America and Russia and the rest of it. I think it is quite Trump specific, in that he is particularly seduced by the kind of sort of theater of being with very, very powerful leaders who have total dominance over their countries. That's something of a Trump fantasy. So I think that is present. But in terms of going back, I don't think there is a going back. I mean, I think the world is fundamentally changed, and whoever comes after Trump will have to work to forge something new.
So it's not quite as bad as it might be if it was always going to be like this, where you felt that one bad summit Trump could give away something quite valuable. But equally, I don't think we're going to go back to a sort of pre-trip world. And Adam, that tees up a kind of question that I don't know where I stand on this, but, you know, we keep reading about spheres of influence and how there's this temptation, certainly for Trump, Putin. And although the Chinese always deny that they believe in spheres of influence, but it looks a lot like they do. But here we are in 2026. Does that spheres of influence model where the great powers of the late 19th century could kind of carve up the world, or at Yeltsin in 1945,
you could carve out chunks of territory and say, well, this is mine, and therefore I feel secure because I have this for me. Is that even possible in 2026, or are there these global contests about AI and other technologies that actually no great power feels comfortable with its kind of backyard? In lockdown? The geography has not stopped mattering. Of course, it is important for Europe that the war in Ukraine is happening very close to the rest of Europe. That does matter.
Geography is real, but this very old fashioned idea is clearly lacking in a great deal of what matters today. So just look at the strongest of this phase of influence that you could imagine for Donald Trump, the Western Hemisphere. We're recording this on the day that Lula has just won the election in Brazil. The idea that Trump was going to dominate the Western Hemisphere. And while Mark Carney has pushed back against that, Lula will push back against that. You're not going to be able to impose yourself in the way that 19th century empires did. Putin would like to go back to an imperial idea of dominating the world.
I don't think that's possible today. Yeah. I mean, there are a number of problems with the sphere of influence. One is that maintaining your spheres quite a lot of hard work, as Adams suggests. Another is that the boundaries between the spheres are really quite uncertain, and there's always a tussle between them. And the third is that actually the world is changing fundamentally, and power relations are changing within the world because of things like AI and the sphere you have today. Worse won't represent those realities of power in the future. So it seems to me, even in the 19th century, when things move more slowly,
maintaining the spheres of influence is a very, very difficult thing to do. It required people of like mind, all of your European aristocrats who sat around tables only each other. Half of them were related to each other. Even then it was difficult. The idea of maintaining a whole world under that basis seems to me incredibly far. And if the payoff for that hard work back in the 19th century was that you could feel secure, at least for a while, in that sphere, it seems hard. I think you're right. Feels hard to feel that secure. I kind of can ask you about the kind of things like AI, these kind of giant technological contests of this century.
We talk very comfortably now about there's going to be an American tech stack, a Chinese tech stack, these two countries being utterly dominant. How does that work for someone like Vladimir Putin to be one of the also rans, when, you know, his dream is to be one of the three big guys at the table, does he want his own little sphere of influence? Would that be enough? You know, the Putin what Liz has said, and I actually believe it doesn't use the computer, doesn't use the internet, doesn't believe an open source of information.
I think he thinks about AI. I think he knows that Russia is forever. Do we know that? Is that just a kind of rumor or. We have said that he doesn't use the internet? Well, computers. Yeah, well, he doesn't use the internet. Yes. He said it's a CIA tool. So we do know that. We also know that the, the reports he is getting are sort of whatever is on the internet, including YouTube, is actually printed out and put into red folder. But look, of course he thinks about AI and of course he knows that Russia is never going to catch up.
He still believes that, you know, military heart, military power matters. You can have your AI, but I can smash out the world. Except that what this war has also shown is when Ukraine can bomb, can hit Russian data centers. You know Putin's idea. Putin's ideal is a sovereign little. It's not a sphere. It's a kind of a sovereign, isolated internet sovereign. You know, I sovereign stuff. And you see what happens and how fanciful, how just completely delusional.
This is when Ukraine hits a couple of data centers, suddenly you lose all connections because you don't participate. And that has limits. Therefore, when the three of these leaders meet, if they do meet that the idea that they could carve the world up and then sit back and relax it, it. Yes. And that's the problem, is that in Putin's world, it's always going back to something as actually in some ways in Trump, well, make America great again. But it's the idea that Yalta exists in his mind.
He's dreamt about. He's been obsessed with the idea of a Yalta, and it's that Yalta table exists in his head. But what I just wanted to kind of reinforce what Ed was saying is that whatever happens, there is no going back. That's one thing that's impossible. You can't go back to the past. It's not really nice. 45 again, Ed and Adam, do you think that we should view this as kind of the dawn of a new world order, or just a very scary moment? I think the end of an old world order and the dawn has yet to happen. I mean, what he doesn't know is that in the outer picture, he's Churchill. In time, Russia won't matter as much.
I wish Russia was. I agree this is not the dawn of a new world order, but we may see these three leaders meet. We may see Kim Jong un joining, joining the group. He visited China in the past few days. So we may see other movements there. But I don't think this is the start of his armored train. Chug into view just in time. Although there's a summit way down in the south, it's a long way for Kim Jong UN's armored train to go. That's a heavy train. So thank you all for joining us.
I have no doubt we'll be discussing this, this subject again in the future. And thank all of you for being with us today. Do send any feedback to Inside Geopolitics at Economist, and I'll be back soon. And I hope to see you then.
