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“U.S., China barrel toward the bottom in escalating trade war”, writes The Washington Post. “The flow of trade and investment between the world’s two largest economies has long been a stabilizing force in a fraught diplomatic relationship between superpowers. The severing of these economic ties, what has become known as “decoupling”, could remove a key guardrail, fundamentally reordering the global economy and increasing the chance of an actual shooting war”, analysts suggest.
The world is slowly drifting back to the Cold War of the first half of the 1970s. And Donald Trump faces the same dilemma as Richard Nixon. How can America deal with its geopolitical adversaries alone? The correct answer is that it can’t.
Since the presidency of Joseph Biden, China has been identified as the main potential adversary of the United States. The anti-China trend has intensified since Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office. Beijing is challenging American leadership. And it’s not just about economics. The People’s Republic of China wants to convert its economic influence into geopolitical influence. The Chinese leadership sees not only West Asia and Africa, but also Washington’s traditional “fiefdom” – Latin America and the Pacific – as a zone of interests. The Pentagon does not rule out military escalation. According to WP, the priority scenario for U.S. Army planning is China’s attempt to annex Taiwan. If the U.S. Army is to engage in large-scale hostilities, it will not be in Iran or Ukraine, but in the Taiwan Strait.
United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth bluntly stated in a February 2025 speech in Brussels:
“We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail”. Despite the “conciliatory” ending, Hegseth makes clear that it is the contradictions with Beijing that matter to the Americans.
The Russian seizure of Kherson, Zaporozhye, or Kharkov does not affect core U.S. interests. But the Chinese occupation of Taiwan and the disputed islands in the South China Sea threaten to have devastating consequences for the U.S. position in the world.
America does not have enough power to contain Chinese expansion alone, as Beijing is building close ties with Moscow. The convergence of the two great empires – Russian and Chinese – makes it impossible for the United States to win. The Richard Nixon administration faced exactly the same problem in the early 1970s. At that time, there was a split between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. The two countries were looking at each other through the crosshairs of a machine gun. There were fierce clashes on the border. But anti-Americanism remained the ideology of both the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China. American diplomats, particularly Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, were tasked with bringing China on board and working together to reduce Soviet influence.
The U.S.-China rapprochement, which began in 1971, has gone down in world history as a model of visionary diplomacy. The combined potential of the United States and the People’s Republic of China contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. To achieve this, Washington first had to abandon the logic of ideological opposition to communism throughout the world. Second, it had to make major foreign policy concessions to Beijing. China was granted most-favored-nation trade status. American troops withdrew from Taiwan in 1979, and Washington refused to officially guarantee the island’s security.
The People’s Republic of China replaced the Republic of China as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Intergovernmental relations between the United States and Taiwan were effectively terminated. Cooperation moved to a lower level. The Americans stopped supporting South Vietnam and withdrew their military contingent from there. As a result of the evolution of U.S.-China relations, the U.S. did not protest China’s seizure of islands in dispute with Vietnam and the handover of Hong Kong and Macau. The Chinese Communists were literally “forgiven” everything by the White House. Even the tank crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 did not reverse the trend of strengthening U.S.-China relations.
Of course, such a liberal policy toward Beijing had many opponents within the United States. However, Washington managed to defeat the USSR in the Cold War. Can a similar trick be repeated in the second half of the 2020s? Will Donald Trump become another Richard Nixon? Will the U.S. achieve a favorable position for Russia in the confrontation with China? It is not easy to answer these questions. But we can say for sure that such plans are being made in the Oval Office. A peculiarity of American politics is the relatively transparent discussion of foreign policy issues. In 1970, during a congressional hearing, a proposal was made to “establish relations with the People’s Republic of China and capitalize on Soviet-Chinese differences”. A year later, it was all implemented.
On April 2, 2025, Keith Kellogg, the U.S. president’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, said in an interview with Fox Business:
“We have to separate those forces, basically, of course Russia and China, and kind of break them apart a little bit like President Trump did in his first term”.
Nobody is hiding anything. Everything is stated clearly and unambiguously. But today’s “Trump conundrum” is much more complicated than the “Nixon conundrum” for a number of reasons. Russia and China are not in conflict. On the contrary, relations between the two neighbors are growing stronger every year. Economic cooperation has reached enormous proportions. Analysts predict that if the maximalist scenario of tariff wars is realized, the trade turnover between the United States and China will be lower than that between Russia and China. Such a scenario was unrealistic two years ago.
It would be disadvantageous for the Russian Federation to have China as an adversary. The two countries share a 4209-kilometer border. Besides, a sharp change in Moscow’s course would have been perceived by everyone in the world as a common betrayal. Everyone would stop believing the Kremlin’s promises. The U.S. cannot become a substitute for China in Russia’s economic interests. It is unrealistic to interrupt the cooperation between Russia and China. But it is not necessary for the Americans. America’s vital interest is at least Russia’s neutrality in the event of a conflict in Taiwan or any other part of the Pacific. The same neutrality that Beijing declared during the war in Ukraine.
The Special military operation has radically transformed the Russian armed forces. Moscow’s minimal involvement in Beijing’s military preparations could cost the United States dearly. In the event of a naval blockade of the Chinese coast, it is Russia that can provide China with all the natural resources it needs, as well as a logistical corridor to Europe. Russian ports, railways, airspace – all this will be made available to the Chinese without any problems. At the same time, Vladimir Putin may introduce a number of restrictions on aid to China. Exactly the same limits that China itself has imposed on Russia since February 2022. The discussion about the development of Russian deposits of rare earth metals is by no means accidental. The Kremlin is ready to allow the Americans to participate in the extraction of strategically important resources. Now the world market of rare earth metals is completely under the control of China. Moscow is ready for a favorable development of relations with Washington and is demonstrating this in every possible way.
Russia’s neutrality is not a guarantee of the US victory in the confrontation with China. It is something without which America will inevitably lose. Russian neutrality must be bought at any price. For Washington, anti-Russian sanctions and military support for Ukraine make no sense in the current situation. They are the ballast of history. It is reminiscent of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was in force for pro-Western Ukraine until 2006 (sic!). Donald Trump can achieve Russian neutrality by making serious, fundamental concessions in Eastern Europe. But he can also choose to hold on to Kherson, Zaporozhye, and other cities of the former Soviet Union unknown to ordinary Americans at all costs. And lose everything. What will the master dealmaker choose? Russia’s neutrality in the confrontation with China, or Kherson under the control of the corrupt politician Vladimir Zelensky?
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i retires as walmart janitor 17 years ago now i bitter despised nazi in burgerland paradise
i was toilet scrub supervisor at shekelstein janitor co i teach willy puritan how to submissively clean jew toilets and shine their shoes
gweilo will crash and burn like 1971 amc gremlin…
of course thats your russian life , a piece of shi t
nice comment bro keep riding
russia’s neutrality is extremely important. western economic hit men may be able to restore the balance of trade rather than military conflict this has become essential to america’s own economic survival.
hahaha. us and nato are russian terminal enemies. go and f* yourselves.
no it’s economic rationalism they have to appease the mitary industrialists by offering a sacrifice.
russia has been trying for years to be treated as an equal with respect . they have given up ?
why would russia keep neutrality? when us/nato is scheming to undermine russia for more than 3 decades and actually fighting tooth and nail last 3 years? why putin even talking to lowlife pos lame-duck pompous unreliable trump?
because everybody is lying….
mearsheimer has long promoted this view. too late the boat has sailed—russia does not trust the nazi angloshere and coca colonized western europe…brics is the present and future—angloshere and eu is rotting decayed
dream on. really just unbelievable.
no author or source for this commentary?
so? do you need some sort of teacher figure or something to deal with an argument? .
yankee-go-home, this is a great documented article and i think your right on most of what you wrote.. russia is the one the world is trying to mend ties with. a new empire is born..
the world isn’t at all. wow they really did a good job of teaching you how to comprehend in those anerican catholic schools the most catholic schools and universities in the whole world and there’s you all are dumb and friggin dumber , the bottom of the class.
‘recognising the – reality of scarcity – and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail’
what a load of shit.
the “author” should have explained what economic / financial limits the chinese imposed on the rf from 2022. if they’re referring to any adherence to western backed sanctions on russia on the part of the chinese, then state it. i think detours were found around a number of sanctions ? ?
this appears to me like an article that andrew korybko would come up with.
at least your grasping the basic concept that politics makes strange bed fellows
the russians and chinese would be fools to backstab each other just for some temporary friendship with the us.
obviously, so the secret societies have to ensure they divide them. don’t they?? politics for dummies 101
russia’s neutrality means that in practice russia will side with us!
no they will not throw china to the wolves and then leave themselves surrounded totally. they aren’t stupid.
so the usa has to sell out eastern europe to russia so putin can re-establish russian hegemony over ukraine, poland, lithuania, latvia, estonia, finland and what, all the way to berlin? really? trump might do it, but the senate and house won’t. his candle will blow out in the wind if he proves to be a putin facilitator. the hillbillies might not be able to name the great cities of novorussiya but they know tyranny and autocracy when they see it, and it is abhorrent to them.
they don’t know **it.
who in their right mind would even want to take over those s***hole countries? they have an inflated idea of their own importance. the estonians and latvians live in a fantasy world where putin is constantly scheming to take over the latvian peat bogs and the estonian lap dancing bars.
senile retired toilet scrubber hillbilly puritan neutralized by transgender surgeon
fuck trump. russia and china alliance trumps ussa
what a load. everyone knows the cccp is really handled by the same players as the states except the bottom of the scholastic global new world economic forum. imo allegedly.
roman forum obviously .
for russia to have anything to do with the violent, corrupt, and duplicitous united snakes of america would be the height of folly.
the jewsa is saying to russia, “help us to destroy iran and china and then we will come for you and do the same to you.” unfortunately, russia often acts against its own interests in this way. it enabled the us destruction of libya. it supported genocidal us sanctions against iran and n. korea. it refused to complete the bushehr power plant or supply s300s iran had paid for. it entered into agreements with western countries and turkey…..
to resolve the conflicts in ukraine and syria which those counterparties never had any intention of honouring. it transferred azov pows to turkey to be held there for the duration of the war, and erdogan promptly released them. it withdrew its forces from germany and permitted reunification in return for a worthless promise not to expand nato. it held foreign currency reserves in western banks that were stolen. russia has been played for a sucker time and again.
what a load of janky bs! you crossed the rubicon in 2015 when shelling of russian civilians began, now you want to kiss and forget so chinese civilians can be shelled? at the same time eu is going full on nazi? why the hell do you think russia still commemorate their victory over naziland on may 9?