- President-elect Donald Trump claims he can split the alliance between Russia and China.
- The authoritarian states formed a “no limits” partnership after Russia’s Ukraine invasion.
- But analysts say the alliance, formed to challenge US power, is here to stay.
At an event just days before his election triumph, Donald Trump gave a clue as to how he plans to tackle two of the US’ most powerful adversaries, Russia and China.
Speaking to right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, Trump accused the Biden administration of allowing the authoritarian powers to draw closer together.
“The one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting,” Trump said.
“I’m going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that, too. I have to un-unite them.”
Trump has long boasted of his deal-making prowess and, during his term of office, claimed to have struck a rapport with strongmen leaders President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China.
But analysts say that prising Russia and China’s bromance could prove to be an insurmountable challenge.
An anti-US alliance
Xi and Putin are determined to topple US global power and they see Trump’s election as a chance to further that agenda.
“While there are differences between Moscow and Beijing, they both share a world view of America in terminal decline, now further accelerated by the upheaval expected from a second Trump term,” Stefan Wolff, a professor on international security at the University of Birmingham in the UK, told BI.
It’s a relationship of increasing concern to leaders in the Pentagon, as both nations possess formidable nuclear arsenals and sophisticated military technology.
China has given Russia vital economic and diplomatic support to fuel its invasion of Ukraine, a US ally. Trade between China and Russia surged to a record high of $240 billion in 2023,
Meanwhile, Russia and China’s militaries have taken part in joint military exercises as China menaces Taiwan with invasion.
Tensions remain
Despite the declarations of unity, there are serious underlying tensions in the alliance Trump could seek to exploit.
The president-elect pointed to these in his remarks to Carlson, claiming that Russia and China are “natural enemies” because China covets Russian land in the Far East for its growing population.
“There is a lot of resentment of China in Russia in both the public and policy circles,” said Wolff.
China has made audacious inroads in the Central Asian republics that have long been seen as part of Moscow’s sphere of influence. And Russia is wary that China could seek to revive old border disputes to expand its territory, said Wolff.
Russia, he continued, is “ultimately resentful of the fact that Moscow is now a junior partner to Beijing. These are potentially all things that Trump could use to drive a wedge between Russia and China.”
Exploiting chaos
But achieving the goal will be incredibly difficult, say observers.
To entice Putin away from his alliance with Xi, Trump would likely have to present him with a US-brokered Ukraine peace deal that meets most of the demands the Russian president has set out, said Wolff.
These include the annexation of swaths of Ukrainian territory and guarantees that sanctions would be lifted — terms Ukraine has flatly rejected, and that would enrage the US’ European allies.
But even if Putin were tempted by such a deal, China’s current economic leverage over Russia as its biggest trading partner provides it with an effective veto to any prospective deal with Trump.
“Russia is going to be dependent on China no matter what in coming years as it seeks to rebuild its armed force and economy after Ukraine, and it’s a weakness that Beijing will certainly exploit even if it costs it more to do so,” Paul Cormarie, a political analyst a the RAND Corporation told BI.
“Unless it’s [the US] replacing China as Russia’s main partner (which would be frankly absurd) there’s nothing much that could realistically split the two at the moment,” he said.
Jonathan Ward, an analyst at the Hudson Institute, told BI that Trump could instead seek to exert pressure on China, imposing the same punishing sanctions on the Chinese economy as it applied to Russia to tear the allies apart.
He said this would “set a long-term framework for the breaking of the Russia-China axis and eventual strategic victory over this group of adversary states.”
However, some analysts have questioned the power of US sanctions to change China’s decision-making and said they’d be tough to enforce given the size of China’s economy.
Another possibility is that Trump could seek to form smaller deals to create divisions between Russia and China, for instance, on security or sanctions. But they’d be unlikely to last.
“These deals would likely not impress serious thinkers in strategy and policy, but will be sellable as foreign policy wins,” Robert Dover, a professor of International Security at Hull University in the UK, told BI.
The Trump effect
Another factor likely to draw Russia and China closer together is Trump himself. Putin and Xi likely see the chance to exploit divisions caused by Trump’s willingness to insult allies and foment domestic turmoil.
Trump has long questioned the US commitment to the NATO alliance, and Russia will likely be keen to probe weaknesses caused by the possible withdrawal of its most powerful member.
In East Asia, Trump has accused allies of freeloading off the US, a source of tension Beijing will likely seek to exploit.
“China can take a ‘divide-and-conquer’ strategy to dilute the effectiveness of Trump’s foreign policy,” Zhiqun Zhu, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at Bucknell University, told VOA this week.
For many observers, the economic and strategic ties that have formed between Russia and China in recent years are already so strong that breaking them apart is likely impossible.
As Cormarie put it: “The Russia-China axis against the US is here to stay.”
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