Of course, summits have existed as long as leaders have. Think of Henry VIII’s Field of the Cloth of Gold, the Congress of Vienna or Yalta. Those were once-in-a-lifetime events that took leaders weeks or months to get to. But in the 1970s a new sort of summitry began, fuelled by easy air travel and an increasing role for leaders in foreign policy, at the expense of diplomats.
The argument for summits is that it is important to build personal trust between leaders so they can do deals with each other. Former foreign secretary David Miliband argues: “If you’ve got a personal relationship with someone, if you’ve been able to show that you’ve respected them, helped them, they’ll look to cut you some slack.”
- The secrets of political summits, Guardian.co.uk, May 27, 2017.
About the author:
Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.
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