Trump, Xi And Putin To Meet Thursday, Discuss Nukes

President Donald Trump will meet with the leaders of China and Russia next week to discuss possible reductions in the three countries’ nuclear arsenals, the White House confirmed Friday.

A senior administration who briefed reporters on the planned meeting said that Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss reducing nuclear stockpiles.

It will be the first time the three leaders of the countries with the world’s largest nuclear weapons stockpiles will meet to discuss nonproliferation issues.

“This is hopefully the beginning of a conversation that can be productive going forward,” the official said, cautioning that the U.S. doesn’t expect any reduction agreement out of the talks.

Reporters agreed to grant the official anonymity as a condition of attending the briefing.

There are currently no legal controls over the size of the three countries’ strategic weapons stockpiles. The treaty that limited the size of Russia’s and America’s nuclear arsenals expired in February. China has resisted calls to engage in nonproliferation talks on the basis that its nuclear forces are considerably smaller than those of the U.S. and Russia.

China’s role as host of the meeting is significant given Beijing’s sharp increase in the size of its nuclear weapon arsenal over the past decade. China possesses around 600 nuclear weapons and is on track to grow that stockpile to around 1,000 warheads by 2030, the Pentagon said in a report in 2024. Russia and the U.S. each have around 5,000 nuclear weapons each.

The U.S. has concerns about the expansion and secrecy of China’s nuclear forces.

“The things that China is doing very opaquely with their nuclear arsenals is something that has impacts on the security of every human being in the world,” the official said, without elaborating.

The trilateral meeting will also include discussions about the war in Iran. But Russia’s war on Ukraine isn’t on the agenda.

“The president has said that he does not intend to talk about Ukraine in that meeting,” because Ukraine conflict discussions are on a separate track that don’t include China, the official said.

The meeting, which the Trump administration has telegraphed for weeks, has been controversial in part because of concerns that Trump could use it to discuss Ukraine’s future with its attacker and China, which has supported Russia’s war effort.

The meeting also will provide a historic photo opportunity between the U.S. and the leaders of world’s two largest authoritarian countries, whose interests are often diametrically opposed to those of the U.S.

“The optics of this are terrible,” said Ian Brzezinski, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy from 2001-2005 and currently a fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“The idea that they would sit together with Trump and try to solve problems without the active involvement of our allies and partners — almost giving them precedence over our allies and partners — will be very troubling to our allies in Europe, the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere.”