Alan Zendell, September 25, 2026

Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with the maxim: Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. The meaning is that when you see your adversary in the process of self-destruction and completely out of touch with reality, all you need do is wait and watch. It’s all about patience and self-restraint, two things for which Chinese President Xi Jinping is well known.

As Xi was arriving in Washington for his fourth summit with Donald Trump, many of our most respected commentators characterized the president in Napoleon’s terms. Xi has his own problems with a struggling domestic economy. China, like the rest of the world is dealing with the disruptive crises Trump has created in his second term – a trade war no one wanted, serious energy shortages caused by Trump’s war against Iran, and internal domestic pressures worsened by fears that AI could undermine his autocratic rule.

China has relatively quietly been expanding its presence in East Asia, increasing its military and economic impact on the region. Allied with North Korea, it is a looming threat to Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Japan. In addition, its relative stranglehold on the world’s supply of rare earth minerals, resources which the United States desperately needs and is severely lacking, and its ability to prop up Russia’s war against Ukraine and an Iranian military that has used China’s technology and equipment to cause massive devastation to American assets in the Persian Gulf region make it clear that Xi is no friend to America.

Xi is a ruthless autocrat and a brilliant tactician who sees, along with most of the rest of the world, that Trump is a weak, failed president who is severely underwater with American voters and who is weeks away from having his political power neutralized by the November election. He can see as clearly as the rest of us that Trump lives in a delusional world, that his major policy initiatives, with the exception of the huge tax cuts he passed to enrich his wealthy supporters are all failing badly. Xi knows Trump is about to become the lamest of ducks and that anything he promises in negotiations is likely to be overturned by a rapidly growing opposition.

He also sees, like the rest of us, that Trump’s behavior on the American political stage and his bizarre lack of restraint internationally seem calculated to weaken America’s standing in the world, as he destroys decades-long alliances and drives long-standing trading partners away from America on which they can no longer allow themselves to be dependent. Given all that, Xi is quite content to abide by Napoleon’s admonition.

Xi pretends to be impressed by the exaggerated pomp and pageantry that accompanies Trump’s over-the-top flattery and his attempts to curry favor and convince the world that he and Xi are buddies. Xi does not reciprocate in any meaningful way, yet Trump keeps embarrassing us and himself with his desperate need to be seen as a world leader of Xi’s stature. Xi knows Trump is failing in every major initiative, and the result is an America that is greatly weakened and the entire western alliance in such disarray, that China wins in the end just by being a silent observer who assists all of our adversaries behind the scenes.

The only good news for Americans in all this is that Trump’s inept handling of international affairs and foreign policy is dragging down the prospects for MAGA candidates in the midterm elections, making it virtually certain that Democrats will control the House of Representatives, and their prospects for taking a majority in the Senate look more promising than they have in twenty years.

Assuming the Trump administration is forthcoming about what transpired this week, we should soon know if anything significant was agreed to. But it’s difficult to imagine Xi offering Trump anything that leads to an agreement with Iran that doesn’t amount to a total capitulation by Trump. We may get some trade relief if Xi finds it in his interest, but it’s extremely unlikely that Xi will be of any help in convincing Vladimir Putin to end his attacks on Ukraine.

I have no idea what this summit was about. Clearly, Trump in his delusional world believed the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine would have been resolved by now, and it’s even possible, when Xi’s visit was scheduled that he believed he’d be in a favorable position with respect to tariffs and trade. It’s a measure of how incompetent Trump has been in his second term that he couldn’t have been in a weaker position relative to Xi when they met, but by then there was no way to cancel or postpone the trip.

For Americans who didn’t already see reality, Xi’s visit has brought it into focus. Only those sycophants irrevocably tied to Trump and people too heavily invested in his policies to change still have a reason to support him. We’re not out of the woods by any means, though, since the Senate failed to pass a new war powers resolution last night.