Cold war lessons for Xi and Obama on how to build trust

The time has come for a fireside chat between US President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping to lay the groundwork of trust needed for a breakthrough at the Paris climate change conference at the end of the year. If an accommodation can be made between these two states, the possibility for global progress will be opened up.

If Beijing and Washington refuse to lower their guards, then bringing the rest of the world on board will be close to impossible. Thus, achieving a compromise on a post-Kyoto climate change deal hinges on the one ingredient currently lacking between the two leaders - trust.

In 1985, when cold war tensions were high, US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev met on the shores of Lake Geneva for the first time. Not only did this include the now famous "fireside chat", but it also provided multiple opportunities for the leaders to talk directly without teams of staffers and advisers, and without copious notes and position papers. Both would go on to confirm later that this opportunity was critical in reducing the mistrust between the two at the individual level.

The following year, they convened in Reykjavik and held a 10½-hour discussion in which the prospect of complete nuclear disarmament was discussed in depth as a serious option. The Reykjavik summit itself resolved relatively little in concrete terms and both leaders left frustrated about how close they had come to negotiating an end to the nuclear arms race that had consumed their relationship for decades without being able to leap over the last hurdle.

However, this is now described by some as the "weekend that ended the cold war". It was the moment when the two leaders managed to discuss their countries' relationship and the future they wanted to achieve with honesty and respect. It built a further degree of trust that allowed them to accommodate each other's power and concerns. This ensured that, over the next few years, the cold war ended without direct (and therefore nuclear) war between the superpowers.