Lyle Goldstein
Rather than trying to prioritize deterring China over Russia, the Trump administration should consider lowering tensions with both powers.
The late statesman Henry Kissinger is famous for his secret diplomacy that led to President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972. The US-China rapprochement would blossom over the next decade, leading to the opening of formal diplomatic relations in 1979.
Kissinger’s diplomacy not only helped to widen the growing divide between China and the USSR but also succeeded in bringing about a favorable balance of power by facilitating Beijing’s two-decade brazen challenge to the Soviet Union’s eastern flank.
Today, many strategists in Washington are talking about Kissinger’s adroit diplomatic maneuver. administration supporters hope Donald Trump can orchestrate a so-called “reverse Kissinger,” wooing Russia away from China.
When asked explicitly about this possibility, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he wasn’t sure the United States would “be successful at peeling [Russia] completely off a relationship with the Chinese.” Rubio went on to say he was concerned about “two nuclear powers aligned against the US” and observed that the “Russians have become increasingly dependent on the Chinese, and that’s not a good outcome…”
It’s true that Trump has made many unconventional overtures toward normalizing the relationship with Moscow. He may be willing to do this, even if the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine remain stalled. And while tariffs against China have been at least temporarily reduced, pledges by administration officials to reinforce U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific have made the outlines of a “reverse Kissinger” evident. It’s an alignment wholly consistent with the so-called “prioritizers,” who aim to shift U.S. strategic attention away from Europe and the Middle East and toward balancing against China.
However, this approach has myriad problems, not least in terms of its feasibility over the long run. A sounder strategy would be to embrace a “double Kissinger,” improving relations simultaneously with both Moscow and Beijing.
To be sure, the two Eurasian giants have built a rather durable, comprehensive relationship over the last three decades. This partnership could be termed a “quasi-alliance,” showing certain features of strategic coordination but falling far short of a formal alliance. China and Russia have continued regular joint military exercises, but these are not large in scale, nor have they sought to develop joint command structures.
There is reason to believe that Moscow seeks to strengthen and even formalize the China-Russia strategic partnership, but reluctance has come from Beijing. That reluctance is rooted in the knowledge that such a military alliance would prove unnerving to Washington, even setting off a “new cold war,” something China seeks to avoid.
Still, if Washington pursues an aggressive strategy of openly seeking to “contain” China, whether through increasing trade barriers, building up its military forces in the western Pacific, or encouraging Taiwan nationalists, Beijing’s reluctance could evaporate. A true China-Russia alliance could emerge in the coming years, one that could threaten U.S. national security in a variety of ways, whether in the space, nuclear, or undersea domains.
Ultimately, it’s unlikely that Russia can be leveraged against China to mirror Kissinger’s strategy that bore fruit for the United States during the latter half of the Cold War. Kissinger’s original intent seems to have been to improve relations almost simultaneously with both China and the USSR. It was hardly coincidental that just three months after Nixon’s famous visit to Beijing, the American president landed in Moscow to talk about arms control and trade with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
Finding the Soviets in a new mood to talk, due in no small part to Nixon’s recent breakthrough with China, the visit to the USSR proved unusually fruitful, and major progress was made to achieve détente, ushering in a significant decrease in superpower tensions. The landmark SALT I and ABM treaties—the former limiting strategic weapons and the latter restricting missile defenses—were both signed at that historic moment and became the archetypal paradigms for all future arms control agreements.
Today, such a “double Kissinger” is once again not just possible but imperative. The Trump administration would be wise, even as it works to “reset” diplomacy with Russia, to energize diplomatic efforts to improve relations with China. Moscow and Beijing are on record for sharing the goal of multipolarity, going back to summits from the 1990s. Both nations have signaled a desire to work in a more pragmatic, less ideological manner with Washington.
A “double Kissinger” strategy could help usher in a new, stabler world order. Progress within such an order can be imagined on numerous fronts, not least to include nuclear arms control, non-proliferation, and regional security. Overall, this approach would allow for a much-needed decrease in global tensions, allowing an appropriate return to focusing on economic and environmental challenges.
As Harvard historian Niall Ferguson wrote last year in advocating for rediscovering détente in U.S. foreign policy, “The conservative alternative, a return to the brinkmanship of the 1950s and 1960s, risked nuclear Armageddon.” Ferguson also quoted Kissinger’s saying there was “no alternative to coexistence.”
What is somewhat encouraging is that President Trump has already articulated such a vision, saying in February that “he’s going to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss slicing all three countries’ military budgets in half.” That may seem unlikely, given recent signals that the Trump administration is determined to dramatically elevate U.S. military spending. However, perhaps Trump just has to find his own Kissinger, who understands his goal of lowering global tensions and is capable of “walking and chewing gum” by pursuing a rapprochement with both Moscow and Beijing at the same time.
*Lyle Goldstein is the Director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities.
Source: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/reverse-kissinger-no-double-kissinger
