Edited by Max J. Rosenthal and Ruby Mellen BY ISHAAN THAROOR   The most important Asian summit doesn't involve Kim Jong Un By the time you read this, a busy day in Asian geopolitics  have already begun. On Friday, North Korean despot Kim Jong Un  will meet his South Korean counterpart, President Moon Jae-in,  for a historic summit. Their meeting is steeped in symbolism and surrounded by buzz — and could pave the way for an even more  dramatic encounter between Kim and President Trump. Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will call on Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Chinese city of Wuhan for an  "informal" visit. No grand policies or dramatic declarations are  expected, but the two leaders represent a third of humanity and  almost a fifth of the global economy. Their deliberations will always matter. Expectations, of course, have risen significantly higher on the  Korean Peninsula. Moon, a liberal elected on a platform of  engagement with the North, has diligently worked toward  this moment despite months of provocative missile launches and  nuclear tests by Pyongyang. Trump, meanwhile, has played up  the prospect of a meeting, even sending then-CIA Director and newly confirmed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to meet  with Kim — a man now deemed "very honorable" — in secret. Experts, however, warn that little may come of the talks.  The key item on the agenda between Kim and Moon will be "denuclearization." Trump has made clear he expects Pyongyang  to "give up" its nukes, but analysts question whether North Koreans  will accede to even the first step of denuclearization — outside  inspection and verification of its facilities and armaments — let alone  give up its nuclear weapons. "While successive U.S. administrations have insisted that Pyongyang give up its nuclear program and allow the process to be verified by outside inspectors, the Kim regime has long said any process must be mutual and accompanied by the withdrawal of the American military from South Korea,"  explained my colleague Anna Fifield. "In an announcement Saturday  that North Korea would not conduct any more nuclear or missile tests,  Kim made no mention of giving up his program. He simply signaled a freeze." But Trump has signaled that he's not interested in such a trade-off  — or even a prolonged negotiation. The Post's editorial board argued  that his combined over-enthusiasm and impatience could be a problem. Trump "promotes the prospect of a major breakthrough, while promising  to walk out if he doesn’t get it. That could be a recipe for failure, " the board noted. "Trump and his aides should work out what sort  of outcome from the summit is both realistic and in the American  interest, and then design a careful strategy to obtain it." There's little indication what that careful strategy is or if it exists at all. And so the third-ever inter-Korean summit may ultimately be the  high point of an ill-fated diplomatic process. Modi and Xi's meeting will be far more cautious. The two  men are hardly allies, and their summit in central China is  being billed as an opportunity for a "reset" after a rocky period that included a tense military standoff last year along the disputed Sino-Bhutanese-Indian border. The two powers are engaged in  various bouts of geopolitical jostling, collaborating with neighbors  and outside actors like Russia and the United States in a long-running game of regional chess. "India believes that last year's crisis marked a dangerous phase  in the relationship and that tensions need to be kept in chec  — especially with national elections in 2019," wrote Shashank Joshi  of the Royal United Services Institute in London. Some experts argue that New Delhi is better off aligning itself more  fully with the United States, not unlike South Korea or Japan.  That goes against both India's historical role in global politics as  well as the instincts of its policymakers. But with China boasting  a larger economy, a more powerful military and a leader who may  now enjoy a lifelong grip on power, India may have little choice if it  wants to maintain some semblance of balance. "India is no longer in a position to compete with China,"  said Jonathan Holslag, a professor at the Free University of Brussels,  to the New York Times. “It has failed to bolster its national  power through industrialization, as China did, yet remains  too proud to replace its nonalignment strategy with a real alliance  with the United States. As a result, it continues to get weaker.” Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj shakes hands with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi before a meeting of foreign ministers and officials of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Beijing on April 24. (Madoka Ikegami/AFP/Getty Images) But the Trump administration has hardly given New Delhi  reason for optimism, no matter the lip service paid to a reinvigorated alliance with Asian democracies. "Personnel changes, economic friction, and President Donald Trump’s transactionalism have contributed to some anxiety about the U.S. approach to India  the region," said Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institute.   "Russia, which India has in the past considered an important balancer of China, continues its bonhomie with Beijing and recently with Islamabad." Hence Modi's seeming willingness to cozy up to Beijing —  at least for now. "India is responding to an uncertain period in world politics," concluded Joshi. "India's concern is that Beijing will  improve ties both with Washington, because of the North Korean  crisis, and with Moscow, because of the rupture in West-Russia  relations, all at Delhi's expense. Better, in this view, that India  hedges its bets now." Chinese officials are casting the Modi-Xi confab in positive, albeit typically anodyne, terms. "As the leaders of the two largest developing countries, they feel that the two countries need to communicate in great depth on some long-term, comprehensive and strategic issues embedded in bilateral relations and international affairs," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang to reporters earlier this week. Ultimately, that's a reason itself to pay attention. What happens in Wuhan may have deeper and more lasting meaning for the region than the highly choreographed affair on the DMZ. "This is a recognition of both leaders that India and China  are going to have to work together in order to make the 21st  century the Asian century," said Madhav Das Nalapat,  director of the geopolitics department at Manipal University  India, to CNN. "The Asian century, frankly, is at the core of  this summit."

•  Also hanging over proceedings is China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a vast infrastructure project bridging Asia and Europe that China has billed as its signature international venture. India publicly rejected involvement in the project, a position China may seek to change. Joshi has more: “More recently, the U.S., Japan and even the EU have grown more skeptical of the project, which they argue is skewed towards Chinese companies, saddles small countries with unsustainable debt and masks strategic, rather than economic, ambitions. "China is eager to dampen India's hostility to the scheme. It is also concerned about last year's meeting of India, the US, Japan and Australia - informally known as the Quad - after a decade-long hiatus, and their joint efforts to develop alternatives to the BRI. By engaging Mr Modi, Mr Xi hopes to slow India's steady drift towards America and its allies.” • The Washington Post’s Anna Fifield previewed the highly scripted ceremonies involving Kim and Moon: “At about 9:30 a.m. local time, Kim will pull up into the Northern  side of the Military Demarcation Line that marks the exact place   where the Korean Peninsula is divided. "Moon will be waiting for him on the Southern side of the line,  which is a concrete curb in this part of the 2.5-mile-wide   Demilitarized Zone that keeps the two countries more than  an arm’s reach apart across the rest of the border. "Musicians from the South Korean Army, wearing traditional  Korean costumes, will form an a honor guard to welcome Kim across and will play Arirang, a heart-rending folk song about the pain of division. All of this will be broadcast live, another first. "The two leaders will then walk into the freshly renovated  Peace House building on the southern side for photos and   preliminary discussions. "After eating lunch separately, Kim and Moon will plant a   pine tree together using a mix of soil from Mt. Paekdu in the  and Mt. Halla in the South, sprinkling it with water from the  rivers that run through Seoul and Pyongyang. A stone plaque  engraved with the phrase ‘Peace and prosperity are planted,’  along with Moon’s and Kim’s signatures, will be laid to commemorate the occasion.” • Many thanks to our readers who responded to  The Post's survey about a potential World Cup newsletter.  If you'd like to respond and you didn't get a chance yesterday,  we'd still love to hear from you. • A historic display of people power in Armenia unseated  premier Serzh Sargsyan earlier this week, but demonstrators  remain in the streets ahead of May 1 elections. Reporting from  Yerevan, the capital, The Post’s Amie Ferris-Rotman outlines  the struggle facing opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan as  Moscow, Armenia’s longstanding patron, takes notice of the unrest: “Pashinyan’s pro-democracy, anti-government protests have been drawing crowds of over 100,000 people to the grand,  salmon-colored central square of Yerevan, a level of  mobilization this nation of 2.9 million has not seen in  decades. For exactly two weeks on Thursday, the Armenian  capital has been filled with boisterous street parties, the air  imbued with contagious excitement. "But unlike the ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine,  which were spurred by street demonstrations and which Russia vehemently opposed, the uprising here has been met with a  much more measured response from the Kremlin. "The protests have not been overtly anti-Russian in nature,  but Moscow’s presence and significant clout in the tiny,  impoverished country are undeniable. Ousted premier  Serzh Sargsyan was overtly pro-Russian in his policies;  he was replaced with former Gazprom executive Karen   Karapetyan, whose substantial work at the Russian energy  giant has earned him the moniker ‘Karen of gas’ in Armenian. "The protest movement characterized both as being corrupt   members of a ruling elite woefully out of touch with their people.  But for Pashinyan’s uprising to survive, and to complete the  toppling of the ruling government, Russia cannot be ignored.  Russian President Vladi­mir Putin made this clear Thursday  when he stressed in a phone call to Karapetyan that next week’s election — which Pashinyan is expected to win — must be  carried out in a legal manner.”