The End of the Multipolar Bluff: The Beijing Summit as a Point of Transition

Before boarding Air Force One, the American security detail walked through the delegation with a simple instruction: surrender everything the Chinese side had handed out. Badges, lanyards, single-use phones — all of it went into a basket at the foot of the steps. American delegates had not brought personal devices to Beijing at all: phones stayed in the United States or sat powered down on the aircraft. The entire trip was conducted on disposable "clean" phones and temporary laptops. Paper documents instead of digital. Closed communication channels. The intelligence services had given advance warning: the Chinese side would attempt to lift anything liftable from every member of the delegation.

This is counterintelligence protocol, not a gesture of distrust aimed personally at Xi. But it matters for understanding the summit for one reason. Between the two states, a full Cold War espionage regime is operational. Simultaneously, the heads of state walk to the cameras and speak of "mutual success." This tells us only one thing: judge the outcome not by the words on stage, but by what each side actually surrendered and what each side actually received. And this is worth analyzing.

What Beijing Surrendered. A Reality Check

Two concessions. Each one needs to be verified, because without verification they are just declarations.

The first. The United States and China publicly fixed: Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons. Why is this a concession from China rather than a symmetrical decision? Because China is the largest buyer of Iranian oil. In 2024, Beijing bought it at a discount, partly through grey sanctions-evasion schemes. Tehran is useful to China as a counterweight to American influence in the region and as a source of cheap hydrocarbons. Any Chinese position on the Iranian nuclear program other than "Tehran's right to decide its own security questions" automatically means weakening that partnership. Beijing chose this weakening. Not because it changed its mind about Iran, but because it weighed Iran against relations with the United States and found Iran lighter.

The second. The Strait of Hormuz must remain open. The mechanics here are even clearer. Around a fifth of global oil trade passes through Hormuz. Closing it, or even threatening to close it, has been Tehran's primary instrument of regional pressure. Iran has wielded that threat for decades, and it was precisely this threat that made Tehran a regional player others had to reckon with. When China publicly demands that the strait stay open, it is not simply asserting its commercial interests. It is publicly stripping its partner of his principal military-political card. China's special envoy for the Middle East has spent weeks shuttling between regional capitals carrying this exact message. At the meeting with Iran's foreign minister a week ago, Beijing repeated it in public.

The sum of the two concessions: China agreed not only to diplomatic limits on Iran, but to the dismantling of Tehran's strategic leverage. This is not a trade compromise. It is a geopolitical act of capitulation — soft, dressed in the language of partnership, but capitulatory in substance.

What Washington Received. The Economics of War in Numbers

Here arithmetic is needed, not rhetoric. Let me unpack it step by step.

US exports of crude oil and petroleum products reached 13 million barrels per day. A historic maximum. The question: why now, in the middle of an Iranian war? Because many Middle Eastern fields have been damaged in the fighting. Their restoration will take years — capital repair of oil infrastructure under conditions of residual escalation risk does not begin quickly. This means American exports have occupied a niche that will not close by itself after the formal end of the conflict. The United States has emerged from the war as a structural supplier to a market on which, before the war, it was a marginal one.

The capitalization of the American stock market has grown by 10 trillion dollars over a month and a half. This is not a random effect or a general rally. The growth is concentrated in the energy, defense, and logistics sectors — precisely those that benefit from the war in the Gulf. Investors have repriced future revenue streams against the new configuration in which the United States controls both production and routes. Ten trillion is the capitalized rent of war.

US arms sales to the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Every missile strike on Tehran is an argument for new contracts in Riyadh, Dubai, Muscat. The logic is plain: if Iran demonstrates it can strike, every neighbor needs an upgrade to its air defense, missile defense, and intelligence systems. There is one supplier. The contracts run for decades.

Eighty percent of Asia's oil and gas comes from the Persian Gulf. Imports of Gulf oil into China have dropped 25 percent year over year. This is not a statistical coincidence. It is a measure of how hard the war has already hit Asian consumers and how dependent they are on Washington's willingness to guarantee the stability of routes.

Now the central question, usually answered incorrectly: does an unfinished Iranian war weaken Trump's position? Look at the list above. A quick end to the war — on terms of, say, Iran's return to pre-nuclear negotiations and the restoration of regional commerce — would dismantle most of these gains. Oil prices would fall, the risk premium would disappear, the Gulf monarchies would postpone contracts, the stock market would correct. An unfinished war is precisely Trump's position. The declaration that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons is not the same as a declaration of a swift peace. Washington needs the first. It does not need the second.

Why Xi Signed. The Logic of the Chinese Choice

Without understanding this question, the rest of the picture does not assemble. Why would the future center of global accumulation publicly back the American position in a region where it has interests of its own?

The first consideration is economic. China is slowing down. An export-oriented economy cannot simultaneously withstand high energy prices, instability of maritime routes, and risks of global recession. If oil climbs to 130-150 dollars per barrel, Chinese exports become uncompetitive — because production costs rise faster than for competitors whose energy balance is structured differently. For Beijing, stable oil in the 70-90 dollar range is not just desirable but essential. And this is the same corridor the United States is now holding. The price of oil is stabilizing in an interval favorable to both the United States and China simultaneously — not favorable to Moscow, not to Tehran, not to Caracas. This is an alignment of interests between the two largest economies in the world. Structural interests, not situational ones.

The second consideration is the calculation of alliances. What does Beijing lose by weakening Tehran? Discounted Iranian oil, a useful regional counterweight, several sanctions workarounds. What does Beijing lose by colliding head-on with the United States? Access to the American consumer market, the global financial system, technological supply chains, and global logistics. The weight differs by two or three orders of magnitude. No rational decision-making center would make that trade in favor of Iran.

The third consideration is structural — Arrighian. Giovanni Arrighi's systemic cycles of accumulation describe a pattern repeated three times over the last four hundred years. The rising center does not begin by colliding with the standing hegemon. It integrates into the hegemon's system — using its infrastructure, its markets, its financial architecture for its own accumulation. Britain in the eighteenth century integrated into the Dutch financial system before inheriting it. The United States at the end of the nineteenth century ceded ground to Britain in Latin America and South Africa while building its own industrial base. Head-on conflict is a sign not of strength but of weakness in the rising center. A strong future hegemon uses the existing system; it does not destroy it. China in 2026 is doing exactly this. The Iranian concession is an instrument of integration into the American energy order, not a betrayal of principles. The principles are: accumulate, do not fight.

Moscow. No Longer a Participant, but an Item on the Agenda

Now to the heart of the matter. Beijing 2026 is not a bilateral negotiation over tariffs. It is Tehran 1943. A meeting of the leaders who actually dispose of the structure of the world order — energy, routes, wars, currencies, alliances. In Tehran there were three such leaders. In Beijing, two. Moscow is not among them. The successor of the man who in 1943 sat at the head of the table and carved up postwar Europe is, in 2026, not even invited into the room where the postwar Middle East and the parameters of the Ukrainian war are being carved. This is the main news of the summit — more important than any specific agreement. Because agreements can still be redrawn. The format cannot. The format has been set: the great powers are two, and Russia is not among them.

The Russian delegation was not invited. Russia's position was not consulted. Russia's permission for decisions on the Iranian war was not requested. Two men on whose decisions the structure of the next decade of the world economy depends sat down in Beijing and agreed on: the Iranian nuclear program, the Hormuz strait, oil routes, energy prices, arms sales in the region, and — the key detail — the parameters for ending the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian war was on the agenda. Russia was not.

This is a fundamental change of format. There will be no more Anchorages. There will be no more top-level meetings of Trump and Putin in which the Russian leader appears as one of two arbiters of Ukraine's fate. Not because Trump is offended. Because he understood: talking to Putin directly is a waste of time. The Russian position rests not on its own weight, but on Chinese backing. So the negotiation has to be conducted with the real holder of that weight — with Xi. Putin will be informed of the terms afterward.

That is what happened in Beijing. Trump's last phone call with Putin on April 29 ended with a refusal of the Russian proposal regarding Iranian uranium and an instruction to "focus on ending the war in Ukraine." That was the last attempt at direct dialogue. Subsequent negotiations have moved to the level at which Russia is not a party. The last in-person meeting of Xi and Putin was in September 2025. Since then, eight months and one video call. For a relationship officially titled "partnership without limits," that is not distance. It is a reminder of rank.

On May 20, Putin flies to Beijing. Not for a summit — the summit has already taken place, without him. Not for consultation — consultations are not held with junior partners. He is flying to be told the terms.

Here is the list of what Putin is being told to accept.

The Iranian war will not be allowed to drag on indefinitely: Beijing publicly stripped Tehran of the nuclear prospect and of the lever of closing Hormuz. The Russian bet on prolonged Middle Eastern chaos is annulled.

The price of oil stabilizes in a corridor of 70-90 dollars — favorable to the United States and China, unfavorable to Moscow. The Russian budget was drawn up assuming a minimum of 90-100 dollars. Each dollar below that is a hole worth tens of billions per year.

Chinese imports of Gulf oil have dropped by a quarter. One might think this is a gain for Russia, since Chinese demand is freed up. But Beijing now finds it more profitable to negotiate with the Americans on restoring routes than to keep the Russian alternative as insurance. Russian oil remains an option, but a residual one, not a priority.

The Ukrainian question has been publicly framed by Trump as something Putin must close, not bargain over. Beijing confirmed it: terms of the end will be discussed without a Russian voice. Russia's veto on the parameters of peace has been canceled.

Moscow's four strategic bets — a long Iranian war, high oil, US-China confrontation as space for Russian maneuver, and the right to a voice on the Ukrainian settlement — have been dismantled in a single day in Beijing. Dismantled not by Washington, but by Beijing. There is a particular bitterness here for the Russian regime, which has spent the last three years publicly presenting China as the main pillar of a multipolar world.

Iran. Time Instead of Exit

Tehran receives what in diplomatic language is called "time" and what in reality is a deferral of defeat. Russian support can prolong the agony but will not change its direction. After Beijing publicly fixed the absence of a nuclear future, no room for maneuver remains. The bets on dragging it out, on creating zones of uncertainty, on regional escalation — all of them worked while there was a chance that China would cover Tehran diplomatically and on sanctions. That chance is gone.

Europe and Asia. The Payers of the Banquet

The structure of the new American rent requires payers. Europe pays — by consuming American energy carriers, American weapons, and American conditions on global routes. The Brussels regulatory effect, which Europeans took pride in for the past decade, is yielding in energy to the Houston effect: it is not European standards that set the global frame, but American price corridors.

Asia pays more, and pays structurally. India, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines — every country whose energy depends on the Gulf is now paying a premium for instability. Production infrastructure is damaged. Transport infrastructure is controlled by the side that fought the war. This is not a catastrophe — it is a new level of structural dependence Asia will live with for years.

Forecast. Three Horizons

Short horizon — six months. Oil prices hold in the corridor favorable to the United States and China. The Iranian regime moves into a phase of managed exhaustion — without prospect of exit, but also without immediate collapse. The Russian budget begins to crack: two supports disappear at once — high oil and the prospect of prolonged Middle Eastern chaos. First signs that Trump is turning his attention to closing the Ukrainian war — on American terms, not Russian.

Medium horizon — one to two years. Legalization of the de facto Sino-American condominium over global energy routes. Erosion of BRICS as a project — Brazil and India dissociate first, because the new configuration leaves no space for the multipolar maneuvering that was the bloc's only content. Moscow starts looking for a "new Iran" — likely in Venezuela or Libya, possibly in Africa. Without a Chinese backstop, those attempts are condemned to marginality.

Long horizon — the systemic cycle. What happened in Beijing is not a trade truce and not a new stage of relations. It is the moment when the future center of accumulation publicly chose the regime of soft transition over head-on collision. Britain did the same toward the United States in the 1890s. China in 2026 is doing it toward the same United States, only from the other side of the cycle. The logic is one. In such a configuration, Moscow is not a participant in the transition but its raw-material backing. And backing the new metropole is ready to abandon when the arithmetic with Washington requires it.

Putin is flying to Beijing not to find out what comes next. He is flying to accept what has already been decided.

Oleh Cheslavskyi is an independent historian, publicist, and investigative journalist based in Kyiv. He is the author of “The Russian Myth” and “2034”, and is completing a trilogy titled “Myths of the Third Rome”