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Trump wants US to ‘partner’ with Russia to weaken China: Divide-and-conquer strategy

Trump’s reverse Nixon/Kissinger strategy

Trump’s attempt to divide Russia and China, to try to save US imperial dominance, is far from secret. It has been debated openly in the Western media, with Foreign Affairs magazine cautioning that “Beijing and Moscow’s partnership will be hard to break”.

The Wall Street Journal stated clearly that “Washington’s embrace of Putin aims to drive wedge between Moscow and Beijing”.

The Western press has dubbed this strategy a “reverse Nixon”, referring to former US President Richard Nixon.

Nixon and Trump have many similarities. Both were hard-line right-wing Republicans who used “populist” rhetoric. Both also sought to exploit divisions between Russia and China — albeit in opposite directions.

Although he was a virulent anti-communist, Nixon took a historic trip to Beijing in 1972 in order to normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China.

Washington saw the Sino-Soviet split, which happened in the 1960s, as an opportunity to advance its imperial power by exacerbating the tensions between China and the USSR.

This ended up being an important factor in the decline of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and its eventual overthrow in 1991.

Trump’s strategy has also been referred to as a “reverse Kissinger”, because Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger was the architect of the tactic, known as “triangular diplomacy”.

Kissinger took a secret trip to Beijing in 1971, in an attempt to further divide China and the USSR.

Decades later, Kissinger thought the United States should return to this “triangulation” strategy to weaken China.

In fact, Kissinger had advised Trump during his first administration that he should try to improve relations with Russia to isolate China, the Daily Beast reported in 2018.

Ironically, it was the Russiagate conspiracy theory pushed by the Democratic Party that prevented Trump from pursuing this Kissingerian strategy during his term term. Democrats’ baseless, nonsensical claims that Trump was a “puppet of Putin” distracted from his more insidious new cold war strategy, aimed at kneecapping China.

In his second term, however, Trump has fully embraced this strategy.

192. Conversation Between President Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs

Kissinger: Now, their present philosophy is different from Confucianism, but the basic principles, that if you have the correct principles, you can dominate the world. It’s still inbred in their civilization.

Nixon: I realize that. I think—

Kissinger: No, as far as he’s concerned, that’s correct, but I just, I’m just taking the liberty of saying this for the action when you deal with them. I think, in a historical period, they are more formidable than the Russians. And I think in 20 years your successor, if he’s as wise as you, will wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese. For the next 15 years we have to lean towards the Chinese against the Russians. We have to play this balance of power game totally unemotionally. Right now, we need the Chinese to correct the Russians and to discipline the Russians.