The Concert of the Great Powers

The Trump-Xi Summit and the Marginalization of Law

By Paolo Falconio

The Washington summit of September 26 between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping was filed away by many observers as an inconclusive meeting, devoid of concrete results. It is an understandable reading, but perhaps only a partial one. Placed within the sequence in which it sits, it looks less like a missed outcome and more like a step in a process: the construction, through accumulation, of a directorate of great powers.

The calendar is the first clue. After Beijing in May and Washington in September, Shenzhen is scheduled for November and Miami for December. Four meetings in twelve months are not the cadence of ordinary diplomacy, but of a permanent negotiation. For Beijing the advantage is clear: keeping the American administration engaged at a continuous table reduces the risk of sudden tariff ruptures and buys time. The two-month extension of the trade truce fits this same logic. Such a short deadline does not weaken the agreement — it links it to the next meeting, deferring the structural knots to that occasion: Taiwan, technology, supply chains.

From this arises the most consequential hypothesis: that this sequence of meetings is building, more than an agreement, a directorate. Not a partition treaty, but something similar — despite the contingent historical differences — to a nineteenth-century concert of powers: an informal and continuous management of order by a few, with mutual recognition of spheres of influence and red lines. If Russia were also seated at the final summit in the series, the table would take on a tripartite form. The aim would not be to resolve disputes, but to make them manageable among a select few. Within those spheres, each power would effectively claim a state of exception — the faculty to act regardless of international law. This remains an interpretive hypothesis: no official document speaks of spheres of influence. But the direction is consistent with the facts.

The second clue is the agreement on Greenland signed on September 22 in New York by the United States, Denmark, and Greenland. The three-party negotiation bypasses political NATO and sees the legal nature of the relationship transformed. According to available accounts, the text grants American forces permanent rights of access, surveillance, and deployment, including the Golden Dome missile defense system. It also subjects foreign investment in sensitive sectors to the unanimous approval of the three signatories, effectively excluding Russia and China. Two aspects matter more than the others: Arctic security is being managed bilaterally rather than through the alliance, and Washington obtains an economic screening power that redefines regional sovereignty outside EU channels. This is the model of the direct agreement. The fact that the deal was signed in New York without a word being said at the UN says much about how little the Glass Palace is considered the place where decisions are made.

The third clue concerns the United Nations themselves. Xi was in the United States, yet chose not to attend the General Assembly, leaving the speech to Vice President Han Zheng, who reprised the usual Chinese rhetoric on multilateralism and development. The contradiction is only apparent. Beijing uses the language of institutions to present itself as a guardian of order, but chooses the bilateral setting when it comes to deciding. Skipping the Assembly to focus on the confrontation with Trump projects China as the United States' equal, not as one among many members of an organization. The message is that the decisions that matter are made among the great powers.

Taken together, the three elements sketch an order in which the balance of power weighs more than rules: transactional and asymmetric agreements, centered on hard security, technology, and supply chains. This is not the formal end of international law, which survives as a language and as a tool for those who have nothing else. It is its marginalization at the decisive junctures.

None of this is written down, and perhaps it never will be: a concert of powers lives precisely on the absence of treaties. But the format and timing of the meetings make the hypothesis plausible. There is also a dimension typical of the Trump presidency: a nineteenth-century vision of international relations that the President himself has repeatedly invoked by citing his models from America's past. Even if one were not facing a clear intention, the presence of a cultural backdrop that could make such a construction possible is undeniable.

But if the hypothesis were not borne out by the intentions of the parties, perhaps the question would no longer be "what did they agree on," but "what kind of order is being built through these methods."

In any case, the most serious problem in this scenario is European. The Union has neither a unified strategic vision nor credible defense autonomy, and its influence depends on a system of rules that the great powers show they regard as optional. The Greenland case is revealing: a territory tied to a member state is being reshaped in a negotiation from which Brussels is absent. In a directorate-style order, those without power of their own do not sit at the table — they bear the consequences of its decisions. Should this trajectory be confirmed, Europe would be left with two paths: rapidly building its own political, industrial, and military capabilities, or accepting the role of spectator. Judging by the calendar of upcoming summits, the time to choose is short.