Trump’s hidden goal in Alaska was to break the China-Russia axis
The Alaska summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was more than a high-stakes encounter over the Ukraine war. It signaled America’s recognition that its own missteps have helped drive Russia closer to China, fueling a de facto alliance that poses the gravest threat to U.S. global preeminence since the Cold War.
Washington’s miscalculations helped build the China-Russia partnership it now fears most.
In a world where the U.S., China and Russia are the three leading powers, the Alaska summit underscored Trump’s bid to redraw the great-power triangle before it hardens against America.
The president’s Alaska reset seeks to undo a policy that turned two natural rivals into close strategic collaborators, by prioritizing improved U.S.-Russia ties.
Trump’s signaling was unmistakable. In a Fox News interview immediately after the summit, he blasted his predecessor. “He [Biden] did something that was unthinkable,” Trump said. “He drove China and Russia together. That’s not good. If you are just a minor student of history, it’s the one thing you didn’t want to do.”
The remark captured the essence of America’s dilemma. Two powers that are historic rivals — one vast in land and resources, the other populous and expansionist — have been pushed into each other’s arms by Washington’s own punitive strategies.
For decades, the bedrock of U.S. grand strategy was to keep Moscow and Beijing apart. President Richard Nixon’s 1972 opening to Beijing was not about cozying up to Mao Zedong’s brutal regime, but about exploiting the Sino-Soviet split by coopting China in an informal alliance geared toward containing and rolling back Soviet influence and power.
That strategy helped the West win the Cold War, not militarily but geopolitically.
Since 2022, however, Washington has inverted that logic. In response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. unleashed unprecedented sanctions designed to cripple Russia economically. Instead, the sanctions drove the Kremlin toward Beijing while tightening Putin’s grip on power. What had been an uneasy partnership has become strategic collaboration against a common adversary — the U.S.
Rather than playing one against the other, America finds itself confronting a two-against-one dynamic, with China as the primary gainer. Western sanctions have effectively handed resource-rich Russia to resource-hungry China. Beijing has also chipped away at Russian influence in Central Asia, bringing former Soviet republics into its orbit.
Meanwhile, despite the grinding war in Ukraine, Russia remains a formidable power. Its global reach, military capacity and resilience under sanctions have belied Western hopes that it could be isolated into irrelevance.
On the battlefield, Russia holds the strategic initiative, strengthening Putin’s bargaining hand and reducing his incentive to accept any ceasefire not largely on his own terms. The uncomfortable truth for Washington is that it risks losing a proxy war into which it has poured vast resources.
The legacy-conscious Trump recognizes this. His push for a negotiated end to the war is not a retreat but an attempt to cut losses and refocus U.S. strategy on the larger contest with China that will shape the emerging new global order.
Among the great powers, only China has both the ambition and material base to supplant the U.S. Its economy, military spending and technological capabilities dwarf that of Russia. Yet Beijing remains the main beneficiary of America’s hard line against Moscow.
In fact, sanctions and Western weaponization of international finance have turned China into Russia’s financial lifeline. Russia’s export earnings are now largely parked in Chinese banks, in effect giving Beijing a share of the returns. China has also locked in discounted, long-term energy supplies from Russia. These secure overland flows, which cannot be interdicted by hostile forces, bolster China’s energy security in ways maritime trade never could — a crucial hedge as it eyes Taiwan. Far from weakening Beijing, U.S. policy has made it stronger.
A formal China-Russia alliance would unite Eurasia’s vast resources and power — America’s ultimate nightmare, as it would accelerate its relative decline. The Ukraine war has drained U.S. focus even as China expands influence in the Indo-Pacific, the true theater of 21st-century geopolitics.
This is why the Alaska summit mattered. Trump and Putin seemed to recognize that improved ties could reshape the global balance of power. For Trump, the goal is clear: Reverse America’s blunder, separate Moscow from Beijing and refocus power on the systemic challenge posed by China.
Critics call this appeasement, but it echoes Nixon’s outreach to Mao: exploiting geopolitical rivalries to keep the U.S. globally preeminent.
Washington needs similar clarity today, not doubling down on a failing proxy war, but easing tensions with Russia while strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, where the stakes are truly global.
Trump’s tariff-first approach, evident in his punitive approach toward India, has already hurt important partnerships. Yet his instinct on the U.S.-China-Russia triangle could be transformative. If he can begin to pry Moscow away from Beijing — or even sow just enough mistrust to prevent a durable Sino-Russian alliance — he will have altered the trajectory of world politics.
America need not befriend Russia — it need only prevent Russia from becoming China’s junior partner in an anti-U.S. coalition. That requires ending the Ukraine war and creating space for a geopolitical reset.
The Alaska summit was only a first step. But it acknowledged what U.S. policymakers resist admitting: continuing the current course will further strengthen China and entrench America’s disadvantages. A shift in strategy is not weakness. It is the essence of grand strategy — recognizing when old approaches have outlived their usefulness.
If Trump can reengineer the strategic geometry of the great-power triangle, he will have preserved America’s place at the apex of the global order.
* Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”