The Ghost Of Yalta

Last year, on the grounds of the Crimean palace where Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met in 1945, a Russian artist installed portraits of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping in the poses of the Big Three. The exhibition was called “Yalta 2.0.” Next week, the real thing may happen in Shenzhen.

The three leaders may meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which runs November 18 and 19. Beijing has confirmed it is discussing such a meeting, and Trump told reporters over the weekend that he thinks it will. No meeting has been formally announced.

The comparison with Yalta has limits. In February 1945, the three leaders were wartime allies facing a common enemy. They disagreed often, but they shared an immediate goal: defeating Nazi Germany and shaping the peace that followed.

Today’s three powers share no such purpose. Trump has said he wants to talk about denuclearization and ending the war in Iran, while Putin has proposed discussing Ukraine, with Kyiv absent. Beijing has appeared lukewarm about a meeting that would hand Russia a diplomatic win.

Yalta is often remembered as the place where great powers settled the fate of smaller nations. Its deeper failure lay in what the Western allies accepted. Stalin signed the Declaration on Liberated Europe, which pledged free elections in the countries freed from Nazi occupation, and he agreed to free elections in Poland. He honored neither. When Poland finally voted in 1947, the election secured its place in the Soviet bloc. Roosevelt and Churchill had no effective means to enforce what Stalin signed.

That is the test for Shenzhen. A ceasefire pledge without monitoring, or a nuclear commitment without inspections, would repeat Yalta’s mistake. The recent record gives reason for caution. The United States found Russia in violation of the INF Treaty and withdrew in 2019. Russia halted New START inspections in 2022 and suspended its participation in 2023, and the treaty expired in February. Moscow says it will keep to the old limits as long as Washington does, while the State Department says no such arrangement exists. China, with an estimated 620 warheads and a Pentagon projection of roughly 1,000 by 2030, has refused to join arms control talks.

Verification can work. Under the 1987 INF Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union destroyed some 2,700 missiles under on-site inspection, and inspections continued for a decade afterward. The Russian missile that Washington says broke the treaty was first tested in 2008, seven years after the inspections ended.

Talking to adversaries is not appeasement. Nor is meeting them an achievement in itself. Direct talks among nuclear-armed rivals can prevent dangerous miscalculation, and real progress on Ukraine or nuclear weapons would be welcome. Whatever is agreed in Shenzhen should come with the means to check it.

History will not judge Shenzhen by who sat at the table, but by what they accomplished across it.