I see many people commenting that the US is trying to pull a reverse Kissinger, wooing Russia away from China, completely missing the obvious truth right before their eyes: if thereās a split happening, itās a Euro-US split.
Thatās a common flaw in human nature, weāre often incapable to conceive that the status quo weāve lived with our entire lives has fundamentally changed. We look to patterns from the past, seek to refight the previous war; itās far easier and more comforting to believe youāre still in the box even when the box has disappeared.
Russia isnāt going to split again from China, there is not a single chance in hell, it learned that lesson the hard wayā¦ Putin, as a famously keen student of history, understands how much damage that did.
And why would he? What benefit would Russia possibly derive from this? The world has changed: as weāve seen during the Ukraine war the West unleashed its entire economic arsenal against Russia, only to demonstrate its own impotence. Russia last year was Europeās fastest-growing economy even when completely cut off from Western markets. So if the Westās maximum pressure amounts to so little, its maximum friendship isnāt worth much more.
Itās utterly delusional to think that the two torch bearers of the Global South would split just as the emergence of the long sought multipolar order is finally coming true, all in exchange for a return of Western trade which they now know is dispensable, and an end to sanctions which they now know donāt hurt much.
Also, kind reminder that Kissinger didnāt actually split Russia and China: he took advantage of an already existing split. Geopolitically speaking, itās incredibly hard to split powers - especially great powers, but itās much easier to leverage an existing split. And looking at the landscape, those that are already split - or rather splitting - arenāt Russia and China, but very much the U.S. and Europe.
A Euro-US split was bound to happen sooner or later, as the cost of the alliance increasingly outweighed the benefits on both sides. Especially with the rise of the Global South, China in particular, which initiated a profound identity crisis: suddenly you had countries ānot like usā being far more successful, taking over an unsurmountable lead in manufacturing, and increasingly science and technology.
At some point there are three choices in front of you: join them, beat them, or isolate yourself from them and slowly decay into irrelevance. The West has been trying the ābeat themā approach for the better part of the past 10 years and weāve seen the results: an increasingly desperate series of failed strategies that only accelerated Western decline while strengthening the very powers they meant to weaken.
It also tried the āisolate yourselfā approach with the various plans of āfriend-shoringā, āde-riskingā, āsmall yard, high fenceā, etc. That wasnāt much more successful and the West undoubtedly sees the writing on the wall: the more you isolate yourself from a more dynamic economy, the further behind you get.
This leaves us with ājoin themā, and here Trumpās calculation seems to be that if the U.S. does so first, it undoubtedly can negotiate much better terms for the U.S., much like China did with Kissinger back in the late 1970s when it joined what was at the time still the U.S.-led international order. With Europe, like the Soviet Union back then, left with no choice but to accept whatever crumbs remain.
The situation of course isnāt exactly similar. Weāre outside the box, rememberā¦ For one the U.S. isnāt remotely in the same conditions as those of China back then and, unlike the Soviet Union, Europe lacks both the military might to resist this new arrangement and the economic autonomy to chart its own course. Which means that in many ways, geopolitically speaking, the U.S. is in better conditions and with more leverage than China had (and therefore able to get itself a better deal), and the EU ends up in worse conditions than the Soviets.
Still, the fundamental reality remains that Trump, for all his faults, seems to have understood earlier than Europeans that the world has changed and heād better be the first to adapt. This was clear from Rubioās very first major interview in his new role as Secretary of State when he declared that weāre now in a multipolar world with āmulti-great powers in different parts of the planetā.
As a European though, I can only despair at the incompetence and naivety of our leaders who didnāt see this coming and didnāt adapt first, despite all the opportunities and incentives to do so. They foolishly preferred to cling to their role as Americaās junior partner, even as that partnership was increasingly against their own interests, something which Iāve personally warned about for years.
Turns out, strangely, that the Europeans were in fact in many ways more hubristic and more trapped in the delusions of Western supremacy than the Americans. The price for this hubris will be very steep, because instead of proactively shaping their role in the emerging multipolar order, they will now have to accept whatever terms are decided for them.
From @RnaudBertrand
Correct me if I am wrong, but I dont think the US wants to ājoinā in an alliance with China-Russia. America will not join anything if they are not the leader of it and have the ultimate say on decisions.
This is giving Trump too much credit no? The Rubio quote sounds more like trying to manufacture consent for war than building an alliance between multiple great powers.
I agree. I think this take gives them altogether too much credit. Weāll see what happens, but for now my gut instinct is to think that the extent to which the Trump administration is actually embracing ārealismā is being overestimated by many commentators. A tiger doesnāt change its stripesā¦not this quickly.
Stillā¦some very interesting things are happening, and we see the US is at least trying to adapt to changing realitiesā¦Europe is still hopelessly delusional and will get left further and further behind by every other major player.
I think the current administration is an example of being wannabe realists trying to emulate the line of Kennan, Kissinger, and Brzezinski just like Mearsheimer who spent the entire three years since the Ukraine War impotently shouting āwe should be focusing on Chinaā to the Biden government. Iāve seen some articles highlighting Rubioās recent public statements and how that gusano, who made being anti-China his entire political career after his humiliation of being bullied by Trump calling him a ārobotā off the Republican Presidential convention in 2016, is now quite firmly in the āclear-eyed realismā camp of the US āChina threatā lobby.
The weird American nationalist conservative David Goldman wrote a piece framing Rubio as a āChina realistā and covering some of Rubioās recent Congressional report writings:
B of MoonOfAlabama also recently gushed over Rubioās āpragmatismā in the past couple weeks when he spoke about how the unipolar moment was over in a recent speech. He highlighted some of Rubioās comments:
I think through this tone alone, itās clear that Rubio is gunning to be a Kissinger/Brzezinski clone. Goldman talked about how āa credible anti-Communist like Nixon could make a deal with China without accusations of selling out, and Secretary of State Rubio could repeat the exercise, according to this line of thinking.ā
Ever since 1989, Americaās China policy had been hijacked by the āhuman rightsā warriors so it is true that it has been a while since America donned up the Kissinger pragmatic realpolitik mask for its relationship with China. I personally think there would be nothing that China could gain from another hypothetical āgrand bargainā with America as the fundamental contradiction of American hegemony over the world is not something that can be kicked down the road under the guise of āpeaceful co-existence,ā as the errors of the post-WWII Soviet leadership with their constant searching for ādetenteā under Khrushchev ultimately amounting to nothing but some actor freak like Reagan calling them a āevil empire.ā Some parts of the Chinese government was able to recognize this back in the 2010s when China rejected Obamaās proposal for a āG2.ā As the Russian term āagreement-incapableā hints at, I donāt believe even a pragmatic veneered American China policy will be able to tolerate giving any real concessions to China.
As such, I think itās much more likely that a more geopolitically pragmatic American foreign policy will simply be a MAGA Republican flavor of the China containment objective, primarily through attempting to pull Russia away from China (as Trump had talked about many times explicitly on the campaign trail and his special advisor to Russia Kellogg recently publicly fantasized about). The pragmatism realpolitik angle will be that anything is a possible candidate to be thrown under the bus for the goal of convincing Russia to distance itself from China, as what is happening right now with the EU vassals and the Ukraine fascists. Whether the modern Sino-Russian relationship, built on economic ties this time around rather than the ideological solidarity of the Sino-Soviet era, can withstand these American overtures under Trump will be the open question of the day.
Personally, I think that rationally speaking, China has done decent material work over the past three years since the Ukraine war in making itself economically indispensable to Russia, but given that past Russian leadership dissolved the USSR because they saw the inside of a Walmart and wanted to get pats on the back from the likes of Reagan, Bush and Thatcher, I frankly put nothing past the Westanbetung Russian ruling class.
The core issue for Trump and Rubio and their ilk in the current administration is that just because you know the recipe, as they claim to do, doesnāt necessarily mean you actually have the ability to bake the cake in the end. I think that will be the defining trait of their foreign policy.