Summit (meeting)

A summit or summit meeting is an international meeting of heads of state or government, usually with considerable media exposure, tight security, and a prearranged agenda.

Notable summit meetings include those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin during World War II, although the term summit was not commonly used for such meetings until the 1955 Geneva Summit. Following World War II, the Cold War saw Americanpresidents join up with either Soviet or Chinese leaders for one-on-one meetings, which saw the media label these events off as a summit. The post–Cold War era has produced an increase in the number of events described as summits. Since then, international summits are now the most common expression for global governance. Summit diplomacy fosters interpersonal trust between leaders and reinforces system trust in the state-as-person construct, which is identified as the implicit glue holding the international system together.