Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Less than a week before leaders gather in Shenzhen, the nuclear agenda has narrowed to AI guardrails and basic command-and-control pledges.
Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are expected to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on November 18 and 19, and working-level diplomats from the three capitals have spent the past weeks cutting the agenda back to what the three governments can actually sign off on.
The piece that survived is narrow but concrete.
According to reporting by the South China Morning Post, negotiators are drafting commitments on guardrails for artificial intelligence in nuclear command-and-control systems, and a joint declaration reaffirming that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
Working-level officials are also discussing a human-in-the-loop principle for any nuclear use decision and restrictions on cyberattacks against nuclear command systems.
What Beijing took off the table
A wider deal on reducing the three arsenals is not on offer. China has long refused to join trilateral arms-control talks with Washington and Moscow, citing the gap between its stockpile and those of the two larger nuclear powers.
That refusal matters because the New START treaty, which capped US and Russian deployed warheads, expired on February 5, 2026, leaving no binding limits in place. The Trump administration has pushed for a successor framework that would bring China in; Beijing has not agreed.
Ukraine is also expected to stay off the agenda. Beijing has pressed the position that the war should be handled directly between Washington and Moscow, and Russian officials told SCMP the Ukraine file has receded from the priority list.
A split readout in Washington and Beijing
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at Beijing’s request.
According to the US State Department, carried by AFP, the two “agreed on the importance of meaningful leader-level conversations to advance goals such as peace and denuclearization, including at any potential trilateral leaders meeting with Russia.”
China’s own readout of the same call, as reported by Kyiv Post, described the conversation as “positive and constructive” and made no reference to denuclearization or a three-way summit.
The format itself remains contested. The Wall Street Journal reports that Beijing wants a tightly scripted exchange while the Trump administration is pushing for open discussion, a disagreement that could still unravel the meeting.
“For Xi Jinping, such a meeting is an excessively dangerous and unpredictable process,” Kurt Campbell, chairman of the Asia Group consulting firm and former deputy secretary of state, said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Russia hedges, Kyiv objects
Russia, meanwhile, is unwilling to commit to formal international restrictions that could constrain the flexibility of its nuclear command.
Moscow has supported the broader principle on AI, but has resisted hard limits on how its forces route a potential launch decision.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, as reported by The Moscow Times, that the Shenzhen discussions could range widely and would “draw the attention of everyone in the world.”
Ukraine has opposed any trilateral format that would discuss its future without Kyiv at the table. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha warned that a summit without Ukraine “would encourage Putin to continue this war,” Kyiv Post reported.
The APEC leaders’ meeting opens in Shenzhen on November 18.
