Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are due to meet in Shenzhen on 19 November for their first three-way summit. The White House has put nuclear disarmament at the top of the agenda. The more revealing question may be what is left outside the room: Ukraine is not expected to be discussed officially, Taiwan remains a sensitive subject and the countries most exposed to the three powers’ decisions will have no seat at the table.
This is not a repeat of Yalta or Munich. The circumstances are different, and there is no announced plan to redraw borders or divide the world into spheres of influence. But the format carries a familiar risk: major powers can define stability while treating the security of other states as something to manage rather than defend.
A formal agenda, and the questions beneath it
The official focus on nuclear disarmament gives all three governments a subject that sounds global and constructive. A substantial agreement, however, appears difficult. China has for years resisted negotiations with Russia and the United States on limits to nuclear arsenals that are far larger than its own. Beijing is expanding its capabilities, but has not accepted the kind of three-way arms-control framework Washington would like to discuss.
Disarmament can therefore serve as a diplomatic roof over a much broader conversation. The decisive issues may concern priorities rather than treaties: which conflicts deserve the leaders’ time, which can be postponed and which interests can be treated as secondary.
That was the logic that made the Yalta conference so consequential. In February 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin discussed Poland’s borders, Germany’s future and the political order of Eastern Europe at the Livadia Palace. The peoples most affected were not equal participants. Their future became an object of negotiation among the victorious great powers.
Shenzhen is a Chinese technology and manufacturing hub, a symbol of the country’s rise rather than a wartime palace on the Black Sea. The geographical contrast does not erase the historical resonance. Yalta is in Crimea, whose status remains tied to one of the central disputes in the European security order.
Ukraine is not in the room
A senior US official, speaking anonymously in a briefing, said Trump did not intend to raise Ukraine at the summit. A separate bilateral meeting between Trump and Putin was also not planned, the official said. If that programme remains unchanged, the war that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 will not be an official subject at the first meeting of the leaders of the three nuclear powers.
That does not prove Ukraine will never be mentioned privately. It does establish a political priority. If Iran, tariffs and semiconductors receive attention while the war in Europe is excluded, the conflict is being placed behind other strategic interests. Kyiv will not be a delegation waiting in an adjoining room. It will not have been invited to the discussion at all.
The comparison with Munich is useful precisely because it identifies the danger without predicting an identical outcome. In 1938, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini decided the fate of Czechoslovakia while its representatives waited nearby. Prague was left with the phrase “about us without us”. The lasting problem was not merely that Czechoslovakia was discussed in its absence. Its security was treated as a bargaining chip in the name of a larger peace.
Negotiating with an adversary is not automatically a mistake. Excluding the state whose territory and population are at stake creates a different problem. Any agreement reached that way may reduce immediate tension while leaving the underlying conflict unresolved — and the absent party exposed to the next demand.
Iran could become the real test
If Ukraine remains in the background, Iran may move to the centre of the conversation. Since late February, the United States and Israel have been at war with the Islamic Republic, while a US naval blockade has sharply restricted Iranian oil exports. Those developments matter directly to China. In 2025, Beijing was one of Tehran’s most important trading partners and a major buyer of Iranian oil, forcing Chinese refiners to seek alternative supplies.
Trump has repeatedly said that China could sell weapons to Iran. He has described that prospect as disappointing and said Xi assured him it would not happen. Such a guarantee could form part of a wider understanding about competing spheres of influence: Beijing limits military support for Tehran while Washington or Moscow refrain from obstructing Chinese interests elsewhere.
There is no basis to say that such a bargain will be reached in Shenzhen. The possibility matters because great-power diplomacy does not require a public treaty to have consequences. Private assurances about weapons, energy or non-interference can narrow the options of countries that were not involved in giving them.
Taiwan and the price of temporary calm
The Munich analogy also points towards Taiwan. The self-governing island has its own institutions and armed forces, while Beijing claims it as part of China. For China, Taiwan is a core sovereignty issue. For Washington, it is central to the security of its partners and to the strategic balance in East Asia.
In September, Trump received Xi at the White House with elaborate ceremony, repeatedly called him a friend and avoided sharp public confrontation over Taiwan and Iran. The most visible result was an extension of a trade truce until January 2027, although its main elements had been agreed before the visit. The encounter produced considerable symbolism and limited new substance.
That does not mean the United States has abandoned Taiwan or that Shenzhen will produce an agreement on the island’s status. It does reveal a political temptation: commercial calm and the appearance of personal trust can seem more immediately valuable than confronting questions that directly affect an absent actor. Chamberlain also believed he had gained time.
A president who needs a visible result
Trump will arrive with a different domestic incentive from those of his counterparts. At the midterm elections on 3 November, the Democrats gained control of both chambers of Congress. A president without reliable congressional backing has a strong reason to return from an overseas trip with a success that can be reduced to a photograph, a declaration or a deal.
Xi and Putin face less pressure to produce a quick, visible outcome for voters. They can present diplomacy as part of longer-term strategic aims. In negotiations of this kind, the advantage often belongs to the leader who needs the result least. That imbalance could make Trump more willing to embrace an agreement that postpones difficult questions rather than resolves them.
The Nvidia controversy adds pressure to the technology dimension of the relationship. Bloomberg reported that Jensen Huang, the company’s former chief executive, had an extramarital relationship with Alice Huang, a Megapseed executive. The agency also reported that US intelligence suspects Alice Huang of spying for China and that a company she founded received Nvidia chips in China despite export restrictions.
Those are allegations and intelligence suspicions reported by Bloomberg, not established facts here. The White House has said the matter will not affect the trip and that Trump will not raise it with Xi. It nevertheless complicates the American position. If Washington believes controls on advanced chips have been evaded or weakened, artificial intelligence, export policy and the broader relationship with Beijing will be difficult to keep separate.
Trump’s route reinforces the political choreography. Before Shenzhen, he is due to visit Manila for a meeting of the Quad — comprising the United States, India, Japan and Australia — as well as a trade agreement with Thailand and an ASEAN summit. The sequence is clear: reassure partners and allies, then meet strategic rivals. A planned meeting with Kim Jong Un has instead been dropped.
Shenzhen is expected to be the third of four meetings between Trump and Xi this year, with another planned for December at the G20 summit in Doral, Florida. Repeated contact can reduce the risk of miscalculation and preserve communication channels. It cannot, by itself, create a shared security order.
The summit should therefore not be judged only by whether it produces a communiqué on disarmament. The more consequential question is whether the three leaders seek durable stability or merely a pause purchased through the silence of those who are fighting, facing invasion or risking becoming the subject of a bargain. Shenzhen will not prove that history repeats itself. It may show whether the great powers still regard the security of others as negotiable.
