Joshua Kurlantzick
In recent days, President Trump and his administration have released a radical new geopolitical strategy, one in which the White House seems to be turning against traditional European allies and building closer ties to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It appears that part of this interest in building closer links to Russia, including by disdaining Ukraine, blaming the war on Ukraine (Russia invaded Ukraine), and Trump himself lavishly praising Putin, is the idea that the United States can use Russia alongside Washington as a tool together against China. In some ways, this would vaguely resemble a reverse Kissinger—Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon had courted China, which was already splitting with the Soviet Union, to build a U.S.-China front against Moscow. Here, the White House and its China super hawks seem to believe that they can work with Russia to isolate China from the world and damage its increasing global presence.
One can debate whether this radical shift, besides the wisdom of disdaining longtime U.S. allies and throwing a high amount of uncertainty into global politics, would work against China, or if it makes any sense at all in promoting U.S. interests and U.S. leadership. China and Russia already have been building very close strategic and economic links, and the two are allied in trying to reduce the dominance of the dollar as a reserve currency and prime currency of trade, promote alternative institutions to the post-WWII order, and back up a growing network of linked authoritarian states around the world, from Venezuela to Vietnam.
In many respects, given China’s extreme closeness with Russia and the fact that China has insulated itself well against U.S. tariffs, trade pressure, and other types of pressure, China is better positioned to ally with Russia in a more formal way against the United States.
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