Trump flew home from Beijing on Friday weighing whether to lift sanctions on Chinese companies that buy Iranian oil. The country whose military infrastructure the United States has spent two and a half months destroying will now continue to fund the relationship Washington just spent two days repairing.
That single fact contains the entire logic of the Beijing summit. It was not a diplomatic event. It was a property settlement between two powers who had separately decided that the war had served its purpose.
The official account is warmer, naturally. Xi Jinping and Donald Trump agreed to forge a 'constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability'. Trump flew home with 200 Boeing jets and the promise of more. Boeing shares fell four per cent. In 2017, the last time a US president visited Beijing, China bought 300. Eight years and one war later, the number has gone down by a hundred planes and up by a tacit agreement to keep Iranian oil flowing to Chinese refineries. The summit's outcome was described, charitably, as underwhelming. It was something more precise than that. It was a carve-up with the paperwork still pending.
This is the G2 in its mature form. Not two rivals, not two competitors, but two powers with a structural interest in managing their rivalry at everyone else's expense. Washington gets Chinese cooperation on the Strait of Hormuz and a commitment that Xi will not arm Iran. Beijing gets its refineries unsanctioned and its crude supply intact. The stability they agreed to is real. The question is whose stability, and at whose cost.
That answer is not difficult to find. The World Bank has described the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as the largest oil supply shock on record. Energy prices are projected to surge 24 per cent this year. If disruptions persist, up to 45 million more people could be pushed into acute food insecurity. From Bangladesh to Sri Lanka, countries that import the vast majority of their energy from the Gulf are rationing fuel, closing shops early and watching their currencies weaken. Sri Lanka, which imports 63 per cent of its energy, declared every Wednesday a public holiday. Bangladesh, which imports 95 per cent of its oil, saw petrol pumps run dry. These are not peripheral effects. They are the war's most consistent outcome, distributed across the Global South with complete indifference to who started it or why.
None of these countries were consulted when the bombs fell on February 28. None were represented in Beijing last week. None will benefit from the G2 bargain now concluded. They paid the price of the confrontation. They will pay the price of the reconciliation.
Washington bombed Iran's military infrastructure in the name of regional security. It is now prepared to waive sanctions on Chinese refineries buying Iranian crude in the name of bilateral stability. The principle, it turns out, was never the principle. The principle was the calculation.
The Global South was not collateral damage in this war. It was the currency.
