Winston Churchill believed in summits. In gatherings where one world leader would meet, face to face, with another world leader so they could come to know each other at least slightly, and get some work done. He thought it could not hurt the mightiest of men (yes, then all men) to share the same space, talk across the same table, eat the same food and drink the same drink, and maybe take a walk through the same thick wood.
Churchill:.
Conferences on the highest level… not overhung by a ponderous or rigid agenda, or led into mazes or jungles of technical details, zealously contested by hordes of experts and officials drawn up in a vast cumbrous array. These conferences should be confined to the smallest number of powers… and meet with a measure of informality and still greater privacy and seclusion.
Not long ago the leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries, who happened also to be the most implacable of enemies – the United States and the Soviet Union – met face to face usually for several days at a time on a reasonably regular basis.
- President John F. Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, met in Vienna in 1961.
- President Lyndon Johnson and his Soviet counterpart, Alexei Kosygin, met in Glassboro (New Jersey) in 1967.
- President Richard Nixon and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Moscow in 1972.
- President Richard Nixon and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Washington in 1973.
- President Richard Nixon and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Moscow in 1974.
- President Gerald Ford and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Vladivostok in 1974.
- President Jimmy Carter and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Vienna in 1979.
- President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, met in Geneva in 1985.
- President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, met in Reykjavik in 1986.
- President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, met in Washington in 1987.
Agreed: the world was simpler then. It was bipolar. Because, for decades after the Second World War, only the United States and the Soviet Union seemed much to matter, every other country in the world was background, not foreground. Moreover, hope still flickered for the United Nations. Then unlike now it was considered a potential forum for conflict resolution and peacekeeping.
Now though the world is more complicated. It’s not bipolar, it’s multipolar. Moreover, to add to the confusion and complexity are nonstate actors such as, to take obvious recent examples, Hamas and Hezbollah. As to international institutions – most obviously again the United Nations – in general they fail at their most important task. The UN commons is no match for single leaders who are strong and strong willed.
Which returns us to summits as a venue for diplomacy which, however, for decades has been sidelined. Essentially are two kinds. One is a summit between and among national leaders who are friends. These are easy. The other is a summit between and among national leaders who are foes. These are less easy; in fact, they are fraught.
Which is precisely why the comparison between then and now is so striking. Nixon met with his supposed archenemy, Brezhnev, three times. (Had Nixon not been forced to resign it would almost certainly have been more.) And Reagan met with his supposed archenemy, Gorbachev, also three times. Moreover, by their last get together, they were, if not friends, then downright friendly!
Contrast Nixon and Brezhnev and Reagan and Gorbachev with Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. As presidents the latter met just once – in 2021, in Geneva – when they were together for a total of three and a half hours. Similarly, Biden has met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, only twice. The two men were in the same place at the same time in November 2022, though only as part of a larger summit. And they met again a year later – on a single day for all of four hours.
Summits such as Biden’s with Putin and Xi are the antitheses of what Churchill had in mind – informal, leisurely meetings held in private, where two or perhaps a few more world leaders would have several days to get to know each other on a more personal level, unencumbered by “hordes of experts and officials drawn up in a vast cumbrous array.”
It’s easy now to fly from one point on the planet to another. Why then has the president of the United States not met more often with the presidents of Russia and China? Why do leaders of today’s world powers fail to take advantage of every available avenue for international diplomacy? What are they afraid of? Do they personally and, or politically thrive on the hostility between them?
I am not suggesting that summits between or among declared enemies or even fierce competitors are a cure for what ails us. I am saying is that their effective exclusion from our diplomatic arsenal has been a loss. Churchill was many things. But a fool he was not.
One more thing. Russia and China have never been closer than they are now. Is it because Putin and Xi have met 42 times since Xi came to power in 2012? Let’s just say that meeting face-to-face, repeatedly, over several days, didn’t hurt!