Half a century ago, Richard Nixon sought to split China from Russia. Fifty years later, President Trump is doing the reverse. He is trying to split Russia from China.
Then and now, each man’s strategy makes sense for its time.
In 1969, the split between the former Soviet Union and China broke out in an open border-conflict. The split between the communist behemoths had been widening for some time.
The Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia to quell an uprising there was seen by Beijing as having ominous implications for communist regimes not toeing the Kremlin’s line — as China wasn’t. Mao’s China had been seeking increasing ideological independence from Moscow for some time. Now, it was deemed a necessity.
Of course, China was the junior partner at that time. The Soviet Union was the second pole in a bipolar world divided between capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorship.
Today, China and Russia’s roles are reversed — Russia is the junior partner. Its footprint has shrunk and many of its former client states are now firmly in the West’s orbit. The threat of Ukraine becoming yet another helped fuel Putin’s invasion.
Already weakened, Russia has only damaged itself further with its disastrous miscalculation in Ukraine. Russia now strains under sanctions, isolation and diminished reputation (no longer seen as projecting power as once believed) as a result, not to mention the terrible casualties and costs it has suffered.
China, the world’s second-largest economy with the world’s second-largest population, is now Russia’s senior partner. It aims to project its influence, not just across its borders, but seemingly everywhere. It has reneged on its agreement over Hong Kong, increased its belligerence toward Taiwan and actively caused tension throughout the South Pacific and Asia — all for the purpose of establishing hegemony.
Nor does its campaign stop at military aggression. China also uses its economic muscle to pursue its expansionist ambitions — the Belt and Road Initiative being a large-scale example, while its attempts to secure positions near the Panama Canal hit closer to home.
Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger saw a similar gap between China and Russia.
In a first, secret trip in July (another would follow in October) 1971, Kissinger opened conversations with the Chinese communists. These initial discussions would pave the way for Nixon’s 1972 summit with Mao and China’s communist leadership.
Today — albeit to a much smaller degree than the Soviet Union in its time — China has cobbled together a coalition of pariah states to challenge the U.S. Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and Iran are among its partners. Trump clearly believes he sees a way to pull Russia from this orbit of outcasts.
He sees Russia as a regional threat — specifically, a threat to Europe. He has therefore pushed Europe to step into leadership on its regional conflict and assume a greater load of its own defense.
Trump also clearly sees China as a global threat, one far greater than Russia. Whereas Russia has had difficulty projecting its power even across its contiguous borders, China is continually attempting to project power worldwide at every opportunity, often with success.
The opening that Trump sees is that of Russia’s vulnerability. Putin’s miscalculated misadventure in Ukraine has bled Russia in manpower (witness its use of North Korean mercenaries), money and reputation. Russia is obviously not the Soviet Union of 50 years ago, but prying it from China would still be a big loss for Beijing.
Despite its limitations, Russia is still China’s most militarily threatening surrogate — one that has kept the West consumed for three years. Of course, prying Russia from its orientation toward China would further isolate China, something that the world desperately needs to do sooner rather than later.
And it would add momentum to China’s other foreign policy setbacks. For example, its ally Iran has not looked so weak in years, and its surrogates continue to get pounded — Bashar Assad in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and of course Hamas in Gaza.
None of this is to say that Trump is Nixon, much less Kissinger. His bombastic style seems to ignore diplomatic norms, often seemingly designed more to alienate than align. Yet style should not obscure what he seems to see clearly: a differentiation in threat levels from Russia (regional) and China (global) and a possible opportunity to separate the two.
The opening that Trump sees is the one Nixon saw half a century ago. Although his tactics are pure Trump, they should not distract from the fact that his strategy is pure Nixon, only reversed.
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book “Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left” and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.