U.S. Seeks Split of Russia, China

BY YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

President Trump’s abrupt and enthusiastic embrace of Russia and its authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, is driven in part by a strategic desire to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing, two powers that have long sought to end U.S. dominance of the international order.

Foreign-policy experts have dubbed the maneuver a “reverse Nixon.” As president, Richard Nixon cozied up to Communist China in an effort to deepen a divide between Mao Zedong and the Soviet Union. That reset Cold War geopolitics and set the stage for China’s development. Subsequent cooperation between Washington and Beijing helped erode the Soviet Union’s global influence.

Prying Russia and China apart now will be difficult. The two declared in 2022 that they have a “no-limits” friendship, and have deepened military and intelligence cooperation and aligned their foreign policies. China also provides Russia with essential economic support, including computer chips and machine tools used in military industries.

By pivoting to support Russia and backing away from Ukraine, Washington is already alienating its allies in Europe, collectively the U.S.’s largest trading partner and top foreign investor. The pivot could also spook partners in Asia that the U.S. would want on its side in any conflict with China.

On Wednesday, Trump echoed Russian propaganda and directed a stream of invective at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a dictator and blaming Kyiv for starting the war that began when Putin ordered a full-scale invasion in 2022.

That outburst, following a barbed speech to European leaders by Vice President JD Vance in Munich and other signs of waning U.S. support for Ukraine, have already caused a rift between the U.S. and its trans-Atlantic allies.

When Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger reversed course on China policy in the early 1970s, transferring recognition from the exiled government in Taiwan to Mao’s communist regime, they exploited an existing clash between Moscow and Beijing, which accused each other of deviating from true Communist teachings. The two had even fought a brief border war in 1969.

Trump, by contrast, is “attempting to split an entente between two powers that have ideological affinity and shared strategic interests,” said Evan Feigenbaum, a former senior State Department official now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington. “And what it has done instead is to split the West, while Russia aligns with the U.S. and with China simultaneously.”

In U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia this past week, the highest-level encounter since 2022, negotiators discussed the possible economic benefits of improved relations and lifting U.S. sanctions. Those have stunted the Russian economy—and forced it to rely even more on Beijing.

A briefing memo prepared for the Kremlin by a government- affiliated think tank and obtained by a Western government suggested Moscow propose ending cooperation with China on sensitive technological and military issues as part of a deal to end the war on terms favorable to Russia.

Moscow could also offer to limit Chinese participation in infrastructure projects that would strengthen China’s strategic capabilities, the memo said. It also suggested a pledge by Russia to limit natural-gas exports to Europe to undermine European competitiveness and allow sales of American liquefied natural gas, as well as offers to grant U.S. companies rights to mineral deposits in occupied Ukraine.

Such terms are designed to appeal to Trump’s transactional approach. But critics of the outreach to Russia argue that there is little Russia can do to help the U.S. contain China.

“The Chinese are far more advanced technologically in all kinds of sectors than the Russians are,” said Alina Polyakova, CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank in Washington. If Washington abandoned Ukraine, she warned, it would legitimize Russia’s aggression and send a signal to Beijing about its own potential military aggression against Taiwan.

At the Halifax Security Forum in November, U.S. Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, who leads the Indo-Pacific command, said Moscow and Beijing have a “transactional symbiosis,” and that “to think that we will be able to drive a wedge between them is a fantasy.”

There is another, more fundamental, dynamic at play that limits Putin’s room for maneuver: While Russia’s relationship with China is strategic and permanent, any rapprochement with Washington is inherently temporary, at least as long as the U.S. remains a democracy. Putin has to factor in the likelihood that the next U.S. administration may swing in the opposite direction. Even next year’s midterms could alter American policy.

“Russia knows that China is its giant neighbor, that the Communist Party of China will keep ruling it for as long as Russia can foresee—and that alienating China creates a mortal danger for Russia,” said Alexander Gabuev, an expert on Sino-Russian relations who heads the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

That doesn’t mean Putin won’t engage. Trump’s overtures offer the prospect of getting from Washington something his armies couldn’t achieve in three years of war: regime change in Kyiv and the return of Ukraine, and possibly other parts of Europe, to Moscow’s sphere of influence.

“I don’t see why Russia wouldn’t pocket all that Donald Trump brings it on a platter while at the same time maintaining the tight bond with China,” said Thomas Gomart, director of the French Institute of International Relations, a Paris think tank that advises the government.

While China is watching Trump’s pivot to Russia with some apprehension, it is also cashing in a strategic windfall: Its two main goals in Europe, propping up the Putin regime and splitting the rest of Europe from the U.S.—mutually exclusive until now—are suddenly within reach.

As Washington poured scorn on Zelensky and European leaders, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke of the need to maintain international law and the charter of the United Nations. Recently, he described Ukraine as “a friend and a partner” as he met his Ukrainian counterpart.