World Review: Trump in Beijing, Russia in Trouble, Stalemate in the Strait
A synopsis of this week's edition of World Review
Each week, I host a video podcast called World Review with Ivo Daalder where journalists from major news outlets around the world join me to discuss the latest global news stories of the week.
World Review can now be heard on Sundays, at 7:00 a.m. Central Time, on Chicago’s NPR station, WBEZ, or on the WBEZ app. We’ll still tape the show on Fridays, and post the video on YouTube and the audio version on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Now, on to this week’s show. We discussed the Xi-Trump Summit, Russia’s growing troubles, and the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz. Joining me this week were Carla Anne Robbins, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the New York Times; Jamil Anderlini, Regional Director for Europe at Politico and former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times; and Yannis Palaiologos, Correspondent at Large for Kathimerini and “Inside Story.”
While I encourage you to watch or listen to the episode (and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!), here are a few interesting things I took away from our discussion.
The Beijing Summit: Theater Over Substance
Whatever else one says about the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing this week, it was above all a masterclass in Chinese political theater — and the United States played its assigned role. Jamil, who spent more than two decades reporting from China, put it plainly: the most significant aspect of the meeting was not what was agreed but the optics of an American president arriving in a posture of what he called “obeisance,” creating an unmistakable image, for Asian audiences in particular, of Xi Jinping receiving tribute rather than hosting a peer. “It really showed a shift,” Jamil said. “One of them, which has always been a little less powerful, looks more powerful — not than the United States yet, but more powerful than it did vis-à-vis the United States.” Carla added a substantive manifestation of this shift — Trump signaling a willingness to discuss Taiwan arms sales with the Chinese. On Air Force One on the way home, he confirmed the two leaders had talked about the pending $14 billion weapons deal “in great detail” — raising the alarming possibility that he offered Beijing something close to veto power over US arms sales to Taiwan, a concession Ronald Reagan had explicitly ruled out the so-called “Six Assurances” to Taiwan in 1982. Trump’s dismissal of that commitment — “1982 is such a long time ago” — captured a presidency willing to trade away hard-won strategic commitments for the atmospherics of a deal. Yannis noted the whiplash for Republican China hawks who had followed Trump’s hard line on Beijing only to watch him pivot to what he called “solicitous to the point of obsequiousness” — and wondered whether, as the midterms approach, some of them might finally find the courage to say so.
Russia: Bleeding but Not Breaking
Russia is visibly under strain — economically, militarily, and in its domestic mood — yet none of that appears sufficient to bring the war in Ukraine to an end anytime soon. Carla laid out the numbers in stark detail: roughly 352,000 Russian soldiers dead by the end of 2025; official economic growth forecasts slashed from 1.3 to 0.4 percent despite soaring energy prices; forty percent of national income going to the military; a key interest rate of 14.5 percent; and a state happiness index at a fifteen-year low — all while Russia still falls short of its goal of controlling the full Donbas, which, at the current pace of advancement would take thirty-plus years to achieve. The Victory Day parade on Red Square, stripped of the armor and pageantry Putin has long relied on, was itself a statement, as was the three-day internet shutdown in Moscow — ostensibly to block Ukrainian drones from using mobile signals, but widely read as evidence of a regime unsure of its own population. Yannis added a crucial dimension from the Ukrainian side: the rate of Russian casualties has been extraordinary, running at 30,000 to 35,000 killed or wounded per month in 2026. And yet, as the president of Finland told him in February, Putin is “terrified of what might happen once the war ends,” and will likely keep fighting regardless. Jamil and Yannis both cautioned against premature optimism: Ukraine has gained some territory, Europe is rearming at a remarkable pace , and momentum has shifted — but this is a conflict that all three panelists expected to still be grinding on six months from now, without a decisive turn on the battlefield.
The Gulf Stalemate: A Ceasefire That Isn’t
The ceasefire in the Gulf has now lasted nearly as long as the war that preceded it, but the situation it has frozen is deeply unstable — for global trade, for US credibility, and ultimately for the nuclear question that lurks behind everything else. Yannis described the current arrangement as a double blockade: Iranian de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz on one side, the US Navy on the other, with vessels caught in the middle. A Greek ship owner he spoke with described a tanker carrying Iraqi oil to Vietnam that navigated the Iranian toll system only to be stopped by the Americans — stranded for days while the US military deliberated, with oil-short Southeast Asian countries watching. “The Iranians believe this is developing into a major strategic victory,” Yannis said, “and are very keen not to give up things they’ve won.” Trump, meanwhile, is caught in his own contradiction: desperate to declare victory, unable to accept a deal that structurally resembles the 2015 nuclear deal he spent years denouncing as the worst deal ever, and watching inflation data — driven in no small part by energy prices now roughly 60 percent above pre-war levels — threaten Republican prospects in the midterms. Carla, speaking as a self-described nuclear nerd, offered the most sobering observation of the discussion: even a deal that shipped every gram of enriched uranium out of Iran cannot remove the knowledge from Iranian scientists’ heads, and the core lesson any government in Tehran will draw from this war is that “you are more secure with a nuclear weapon than without one.” Jamil suggested the likely endgame is periodic Israeli and American strikes — “mowing the grass,” as the Israelis call it — which has never actually worked, in Lebanon or in Gaza. As I noted in closing, sometimes diplomacy backed by force is better than no diplomacy and force alone.
Those are my quick takes on this week’s episode here on World Review. To get the full story, please listen to the episode itself.