Glenn Chafetz
The Trump administration’s effort to divide Russia from China is doomed to fail. This means that the United States is destroying security relationships based on a delusion.
To succeed, Russia would need to overcome more than a century of hostility and distrust. Both Russia and the US would have to reorient their relationships with allies and adversaries; and the US would need to replace China’s economic support to Russia. Russia would also have to be sure that the US would fully abandon its commitment to democracy and human rights for the long term. None of this will happen.
Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said at the Munich Security Conference on 15 February that the US would try to break Putin’s alliances, including those with China, Iran and North Korea.
Just nine days later Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping explicitly reaffirmed their ‘no-limits partnership’. That should have come as no surprise: the new US policy does nothing to change the reasons underlying Moscow’s political alignment with Beijing.
These reasons include: a shared commitment to autocracy and opposition to democracy; more than a century of distrust and conflict with the US; historical commitments to partners such as North Korea, Iran and Cuba; and Russia’s economic dependence on China.
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