Russia’s Vladimir Putin, America’’s Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping will all be Shenzhen, China next week for a meeting off the 21-members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Community (APEC).
Putin has said that he wants a trilateral meeting with Trump and Xi. Trump said he wants a summit with Putin and Xi. And the Chinese president has said…well, maybe.
The Russian and American leaders believe they have everything to gain. After his bruising defeat in the mid-terms, Trump wants to re-establish his political credentials and foreign policy is one area where the American president retains maximum powers. At the top of his agenda is nuclear arms control, trade concessions, maintaining American dominance and a withdrawal from Iran.
Putin wants three things: Chinese and American recognition of Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine; an end to sanctions and recognition of Russia’s standing alongside China and America as a great power.
Xi is a bit more circumspect. As host for the APEC meeting he is conscious of the need not to annoy the other 18 participating countries by focusing too much on trilateral summitry.
Xi also wants to avoid conflict with either Europe or Ukraine, both of whom are angry at the prospect of the three powers discussing Ukraine without their presence. He is also opposed to including China in any nuclear arms control deals before it has achieved parity with Russia and the US. At the moment China has an estimated 610 nuclear warheads, the US 3,708 and the Russians 4,477.
There are other problems. Trump prefers an open, free-flowing discussion with no fixed agenda and decisions being made by the leaders.Putin leans in that direction. Xi likes everything to be agreed beforehand and for the actual summit to be a carefully orchestrated rubber-stamping exercise without surprises.
The Chinese leader has the final say. He is the host and if he wants to scupper a trilateral summit all he has to do is veto it.
For that reason– if the meeting does take place– it is unlikely to reach any substantive conclusions. At the very most, the three leaders are likely to meet on stage, shake hands, smile for the cameras and agree to talk about talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would benefit enormously from resumed US-Israeli military strikes against Iran.
That is why he was in Washington with his Mossad chief Roman Gofman on Friday. If they can persuade Donald Trump to renew attacks then Netanyahu could save his premiership and stay out of prison.
The logic is simple: You don’t change political horses in the middle of a war.
Israel’s October 27 general election left Netayahu’s Likud coalition the biggest bloc in the Knesset but well short of the 61 seats needed to form a majority government. Instead, the balance of power now rests with Israel’s Arab parties. They are determined to eject Netanyahu from the premiership.
The result is that President Herzog has given opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot first crack at forming a government. Eisenkot has in turn expressed concern that Netayahu is planning to take unnecessary military action for political purposes.
Eisenkot’s warning has not deterred Netanyahu. As soon as the midterm results were known, he was on the phone to Trump to try and persuade him to renew the fighting. His decision to fly to Washington with the Mossad chief is a tag team approach. Gofman is meeting with CIA Director Jon Ratcliffe and then flying to Miami for talks with Steve Witkoff. Netanyahu, in the meantime, is concentrating on the political arguments with Trump.
On the surface, it appears Netayahu has an uphill battle. Trump has already admitted that one of the main reasons for his midterm “shellacking” was the Iran War. He is also said that he has plans to resume military attacks and instead plans to concentrate on sanctions, the naval blockade and diplomacy. Netanyahu, however, can be persuasive.
Good news and bad news in South Africa. Mainly bad. Especially bad for the African National Congress (ANC) which suffered a “catastrophic” result in the recent local elections.
The party of Nelson Mandela that led South Africa out of the apartheid wilderness polled iits worst result ever – 31 percent of the vote. To add insult to injury the Democratic Alliance (DA) is now nipping at the ANC’s electoral heels with 25 percent of the poll.
The DA is known as South Africa’s “White Party” which means that a large proportion of the ANC’s traditional Black base has abandoned the party. ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula, admitted as much when he said his party was losing the Black middle classes.
The ANC’s political problems are a direct result of the party’s failure to come to grips with the country’s interlocking downward spiral of inflation, high unemployment, lack of investment, crime, corruption and ageing infrastructure.
The murder rate per 100,000 in South Africa is ten times that of the United States. In 2025 there were 142,112 violent crimes (muggings, assaults, rape and armed robbery).
Corruption is rampant. The government has established a Special Investigations Unit (SIU) to deal with the problem. But it appears to be unable to do more than identify specific cases. In one such instance– at Tembisa Hospital in Gauteng Province– At least 15 hospital officials have been named so far as receiving nearly $120 million in bribes.
Thieves are also contributing to the collapse of South Africa’s transport infrastructure. They are stealing the copper wire, signalling equipment and even the tracks. At the same time locomotives are breaking down and not being replaced. This means that farmers and manufacturers face difficulties reaching the ports. South Africa’s rail freight fell from 226m tonnes in 2017-18 to 149.5m in 2022-23.
And even when the rail cars do make it to Durban or Capetown, exporters face long waiting times because of broken cranes and other equipment failures. South African farmers are particularly hard hit as the fruit crops spoil on the quayside while waiting to be loaded.
The power and water supplies are also affected. Many communities now rely on water tankers and home generators. One growth area is solar and wind power.
A third of South Africa’s workforce are unemployed. Increasingly migrant workers from elsewhere in Southern Africa are blamed. South Africa’s formerly vibrant economy has in the past acted as a magnet for workers from elsewhere in the region. But the influx of undocumented workers has given rise to the anti-immigrant Operation Dubdula movement– South Africa’s equivalent of MAGA, Reform or AfD.
High unemployment means lower tax revenues. This, coupled with increased social spending, has contributed to South Africa’s growing debt problem. The country’s debt as a proportion of GDP has risen from 45.2 percent in 2015 to 74.6 percent in 2025-26.
All of the above problems could be resolved if South Africa attracted foreign investment. No such luck. In 2021, Foreigners poured $40.2 billion more into the country than left it. In 2025 $2.3 billion more left the country than was invested in it.
In this increasingly gloomy economic landscape, it is difficult to identify a silver lining. But it exists. South Africa remains richly endowed with natural resources, productive agricultural land and significant mineral wealth, including gold, platinum, manganese and diamonds. It also possesses an established manufacturing base, sophisticated financial institutions and a relatively skilled business community. Its geographical position and membership of the African Continental Free Trade Area offer further opportunities.
Perhaps the most important positive is the resilience of South Africa’s democratic institutions. The ANC’s historic electoral decline demonstrates that voters are increasingly prepared to hold the governing party accountable. The November 2026 local elections have reinforced this message. Whether this political transformation translates into meaningful improvements in governance, infrastructure and economic management remains to be seen.
South Africa’s fundamental problem is therefore not a lack of economic potential, but its inability to translate that potential into sustained growth, employment and investment. Restoring investor confidence will require more than promises: it will require demonstrable improvements in public administration, infrastructure, security and the rule of law.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”