Trump Pulls Putin Closer For "Neutralising" China? (image @@BRICSinfo)
US has backed Ukraine in its war with Russia since the beginning. Moscow was isolated by US, and Europe. With Donald Trump’s return to White House, things took dramatic turns to say the least. While showing extra interest in berating the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump has mode sympathetic word for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump called Zelenskyy to the White House. Joined with Vice President J D Vance, Trump downright berated Zelenskyy while going live. He “bullied” the Ukrainian President for not being grateful to the US for its military and financial aid, and for not backing his attempts at diplomacy with Moscow.
When reporters asked about Putin, the Republican spoke soft words. “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said, referring to the persistent allegations from opposition Democrats that Russia helped him come to power.
When Ukraine accepted, reportedly under the threat of Trump, a ceasefire with Russia without offering Kyiv the security guarantees it seeks, what’s driving the United States president to go relatively soft on Putin became the hot topic once again. Why is Trump trying to pull Putin closer?
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Some strategists believe that the US President is attempting a subtle geopolitical negotiations. By holding Putin closer, Trump aims to keep Moscow away from China, which is takes as US’ biggest long-term rival and Moscow’s biggest benefactor.
Reportedly, the move is being called as “reverse Nixon”, after US President Richard Nixon’s historic rapprochement with China in the 1970s. The move normalised US-China relations after nearly 25 years. It also deepened the rift between the Soviet Union and China in a defining moment for the Cold War, said media report.
According to William Jackson and Mark Williams, economists at Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomics consultancy based in the United Kingdom, while Donald Trump ran for president on the promise that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war, his recent outreach to Putin since taking office has gone “far beyond” peace talks. He appears to be on a “broader rehabilitation of US-Russia relations” work, the economists wrote, as quoted by Al Jazeera.
They cite Trump’s frequent use of Russian talking points on the war in Ukraine – the US president has alleged that Kyiv was responsible for starting the war – and his suggestion that Russia should return to the Group of Seven (G7), a select group of highly industrialised democracies, among other examples.
Moscow was member of the group, which was then named as G8, but was ousted by other group members when it invaded Crimea in 2014.
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Trump has publicly discussed the “potentially historic economic partnerships” and “incredible opportunities” for US companies in Russia should its war with Ukraine end. While Russia has been isolated since the start of war in 2022, the end of the war could change that.
At the same time, some members of Trump’s administration suggests that the US President has some larger plans with Russia. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, said that the US wanted to “break” the alliance between Russia, China and North Korea. He made the remark while being at the Munich Security Conference in February. During an interview with the right-wing website Breitbart, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke of how Russia’s dependency on China was not a “good outcome” for Washington. Russia started leaning more towards China after the start of war with Ukraine.
In one of his article, historian and strategist Richard Luttwak argued that the White House bust-up with Zelenskyy and the push to get Ukraine to compromise in a bid to end the Russia war “was all done in the service of Trump’s larger and longer term ambition of neutralising China”. He described Trump’s policy as “reverse Nixon”.
Notably, China and Russia, became closer than they have ever been, bound by strong economic, military and strategic cooperation, and a shared aversion towards the West.
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Speaking to Al Jazeera, Michael Clarke, a historian and strategic expert at Australia’s Deakin University who specialises in China’s foreign policy, said “there is a real ahistoricism with the ‘reverse Nixon’ argument”. “The current situation bears almost no resemblance to the situation confronted by Nixon and Kissinger in 1969-70″, he said referring to Henry Kissinger, a former US national security adviser and secretary of state.
According to him, the key difference is that, by the time Nixon met with Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1971, relations between the USSR and China were in steep decline. The two sides were engaged in protracted ideological conflict over the future of the global Communist movement and they had recently engaged in a military confrontation over their joint border in 1969, reported Al Jazeera.
Trump’s approach to China is also not very clear. He imposed 20 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. Though the tariff is lower than Canada and Mexico. He also spoke about an artificial intelligence race with Beijing. At the same time, he has also “boasted of his ‘great’ relationship with Xi Jinping (Chinese President) and talked up the possibility of a new trade deal with Beijing”.
(With inputs from agencies)
