A proposed three-way summit involving Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping has brought renewed attention to the foreign-policy power that remains with a president even when domestic authority is fading. The prospect of talks between Washington, Moscow and Beijing touches a central question for U.S. foreign policy: whether alliances remain the organising principle of international order, or whether major powers increasingly seek direct understandings among themselves.
Late presidencies have often turned outward. In 1992, George H.W. Bush sent 28,000 U.S. troops to Somalia in an effort to help relieve famine. Bill Clinton used the closing stage of his administration to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, visited Havana and made a final push behind the Iran nuclear agreement. These examples underline why the final stretch of an administration can still carry lasting international consequences, even when legislative momentum at home has slowed.
A meeting between Trump, Putin and Xi would bring together the leaders of the United States, Russia and China, three nuclear powers and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The institutional weight behind them is considerable: the White House, the Kremlin and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs represent governments whose decisions shape conflicts, trade flows, security guarantees and the functioning of multilateral bodies.
For U.S. allies, the format of any such diplomacy matters as much as the agenda. Direct engagement between rivals is a standard tool of statecraft, but consultations that appear to centre on great-power bargaining can unsettle partners whose security depends on American commitments. In Europe and Asia, the durability of alliances rests not only on military capacity, but also on confidence that decisions affecting regional stability are not taken without those most exposed to the consequences.
The debate surrounding the proposed summit is therefore not limited to protocol. It reflects a broader concern over whether the Western-led framework built after the second world war is being replaced by a more transactional map of influence. As previous administrations have shown, foreign-policy initiatives launched near the end of a presidency can endure well beyond the person who began them. That is why the handling of any Trump-Putin-Xi encounter would be assessed not only as diplomacy, but as part of a wider test of the international order.
