The G20 heads of state met in Bali this week, with geopolitical instability swirling around them and tensions raised between West and East. The missile that landed on Polish soil on Tuesday almost derailed proceedings. For one thing, it led Chinese president Xi Jinping to stand up Rishi Sunak, supposedly because of last-minute ‘movements to schedules’. But at least Joe Biden’s three-hour meeting with Xi passed without incident. And the relief of the delegates and the media was palpable.

On one level, this is good, of course. As Winston Churchill famously (nearly) said, jaw-jaw is better than war-war. And we can only hope the growing rivalry between the US and China doesn’t boil over anytime soon. But while talks are preferable to conflict, they don’t preclude it. Liberals since Richard Cobden have seen tensions between nation states as resolvable simply by arbitration and better communication, but this is rarely the case in practice.

Biden and Xi managed to paper over the chasms between them, but we should not be fooled. America has imposed wide-ranging sanctions on China and, historically, sanctions have formed a significant prelude to conflict.