By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Can Trump Split China and Russia?

The one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting. I'm going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that,” Donald Trump boasted in an interview with political commentator Tucker Carlson in October. On the campaign trail, the president-elect said repeatedly that he would stop the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours,” and that he would be much tougher on China than President Joe Biden has been.

Trump has never articulated exactly what his plan to “un-unite” these two countries is, and based on his record, he might simply devise one on the fly. But early indications suggest that the coming administration might seek to damage the Chinese-Russian partnership by reducing tensions (and even improving ties) with Moscow in order to put pressure on Beijing—something like the reverse of what Secretary of State Henry Kissinger orchestrated more than 50 years ago, when the United States pursued détente with China to exploit the Sino-Soviet split.

This school of thought seems to be popular with many people in the Trump universe, including those who have been nominated to his national security team. Michael Waltz, for example, a member of Congress whom Trump has tapped to serve as his national security adviser, advocated in The Economist for the United States to help wind down the war in Ukraine as soon as possible and then divert resources to “countering the greater threat from the Chinese Communist Party.”

In Beijing and Moscow, leaders are anticipating the interregnum of the next few weeks and the start of Trump’s new term with a mix of anxiety and schadenfreude. The Kremlin’s top priority is to navigate this period safely and avoid a major escalation with the United States over Ukraine before Trump moves into the White House. Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes that Trump’s presidency will result in a significant decrease in Western support for Kyiv if Moscow plays its cards well—even if no formal termination of hostilities in Ukraine is reached.

Beijing’s concerns are quite the opposite. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with Biden in November during the APEC summit signaled that the Democratic administration will not significantly disrupt the U.S. relationship with China on its way out. As for the incoming Republican team, Beijing has reasons to be worried—both by its campaign rhetoric and by the cast of characters that Trump has nominated to key jobs in his government.

 

Putin’s Purgatory

Details about Trump’s “peace plan” for Ukraine are scarce, and senior Russian officials have limited their public comments about its potential. But even before getting into a formal conversation with Trump, the Kremlin needs to weather the next few weeks, which it sees as one of the most dangerous periods of the Ukraine war.

After nearly a year of painful deliberation, the outgoing Biden administration has finally given Kyiv permission to use long-range weapons produced by NATO member states, including U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles and British Storm Shadow missiles, against military targets inside internationally recognized Russian territory. On November 19, a Russian armament depot in the country’s Bryansk region was hit with what the Russian defense ministry claimed was an ATACMS, and two days later a command post reportedly hosting North Korean generals was hit by Storm Shadow missiles in Russia’s Kursk region.

These setbacks, painful as they may be for the Russians, will not have a significant effect on the trajectory of the fighting. Russia is gradually gaining more ground on the eastern front. What worries the Kremlin is the West’s apparent disregard for Moscow’s clearly communicated redlines and nuclear deterrent. Putin has said on multiple occasions that Ukraine could not use systems such as ATACMS and Storm Shadow without major technical assistance from NATO personnel and that therefore, from the Kremlin’s point of view, their use by Ukrainians is akin to the Western alliance shooting at Russia. The West’s disciplined and organized nudging of Russia’s redlines has forced the Kremlin to accept NATO shooting at Russian targets in occupied Ukrainian territory—including Crimea—without much retaliatory escalation beyond its strikes on Ukraine, acts of sabotage in the West, and provision of limited military support to rogue actors such as the Houthis in Yemen or North Korea. But targeting within Russian borders is an entirely different matter; in the Kremlin’s thinking, it must be stopped sooner rather than later.

In response to this perceived Western aggression, on November 19, Russia published a new nuclear doctrine that significantly lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and paves the way for nuclear strikes against nonnuclear states (such as Ukraine) that launch kinetic long-range attacks with the support of a nuclear state. To beef up these verbal threats, which the West has not put much stock in, on November 21, Russia fired a nuclear-capable missile at a military plant in Dnipro. Judging by the relatively minor explosions, the missile had little to no payload—meaning the launch was primarily a political signal demonstrating the Kremlin’s ability and willingness to escalate.

In Moscow’s view, the ball is now back in Washington’s court. Putin has explicitly warned Western leaders that he will respond to any escalatory steps, such as new strikes into Russia or troops sent to Ukraine, with targeted retaliation. In doing so, he hopes to stabilize the situation until Trump’s inauguration opens a new window of opportunity to negotiate an end to the conflict favorable for the Kremlin.

The Kremlin is aware that the Biden administration’s latest moves, including lifting restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine, are building Washington’s leverage in any future discussions. That is why Moscow is pushing back so firmly against the most dangerous escalations while not retaliating against those deemed less significant, such as new sanctions against the Russian financial system that the Biden administration unveiled on November 21, or Washington’s decision to supply the Ukrainian armed forces with land mines.

Once the Biden-Trump interregnum is over, the Kremlin should not expect Trump 2.0 will be an easy ride. Ideas for ending the war aired by certain members of Trump’s national security team, including incoming Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, envisage a cease-fire along the present lines of contact in Ukraine and a prolonged moratorium on NATO membership for Kyiv in exchange for provisions to ensure Ukraine’s survival as an independent state (even if not within its 1991 borders). This may seem favorable to Moscow. But nothing at this point suggests that Putin is ready to climb down from his original, far more maximalist goals—which, in his own words, are the “demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine,” and which ultimately means regime change in Kyiv and a permanent veto for Moscow over Ukraine’s foreign policy. The Kremlin would be happy to achieve these goals at the negotiating table, but if it can’t secure the most critical precondition—the undoing of Western military support for Ukraine—the Russian leader will keep fighting, hoping that in a war of attrition, time is on Russia’s side, and that exhausted Western weapons stockpiles and reluctance to escalate will limit Trump’s ability to help Ukraine.

 

New China Hawks

Unlike Putin, Xi has many reasons to expect that the transition from Biden to Trump will be a period of relative quiet in relations between China and the United States. Once Trump takes office, however, the situation for Beijing may become risky.

In recent years, Beijing and Washington have worked hard to maintain stability and predictability in their relationship. Utilizing several channels of communication, including regular contacts between U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Beijing and Washington weathered January’s presidential election in Taiwan, mostly avoided disruptive trade and export-control wars, and dialed down the temperature in potential hotspots for military confrontation, including the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

Biden and Xi’s latest meeting, in November, confirmed that they intend to extend this approach through January 20. The outgoing administration’s new set of export control measures targeting the Chinese chipmaking sector, unveiled on December 2, was immediately countered by Beijing with a ban on exports to the United States of several critical minerals including gallium, germanium, and antimony. But these moves were prepared some time ago and didn’t come as a surprise. For now, both sides have reason to maintain calm and exercise restraint. Biden is dealing with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and China is in no mood to seek out unnecessary confrontation amid worsening economic conditions.

Yet while Putin has reasons to be optimistic about Trump, Xi has plenty to worry about. During Trump’s first term, he started a trade war with China, targeted the Chinese tech giant Huawei with sanctions and a pressure campaign to uninstall its equipment from allies’ networks, beefed up U.S. military assets and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, and unleashed a propaganda war over the COVID-19 pandemic. To Xi, the situation may look even worse this time around. In 2016, the Chinese economy was on a much stronger growth trajectory than it is now, and the U.S. economy was anemic. Today, the tables have turned, largely thanks to Xi’s own economic policies over the last decade.

Then there is the team of national security and trade professionals that Trump is assembling. Most of the senior officials nominated so far are known for their hawkish views on China, and they advocate for more defense spending to counter Beijing, as well as punitive tariffs, more export control restrictions, and support for Taiwan. To make matters worse, most of Trump’s incoming senior officials are either completely unknown in China or haven’t been to the country in years, spending time in Taiwan instead. Similarly, Xi’s current team—particularly his top lieutenants on the economy—are not well known in Washington. Since 2022, Xi has surrounded himself with people—including his chief of staff, Cai Qi, and Vice Premier He Lifeng—who have relatively low international profiles, do not speak English, and have been mostly inaccessible to Washington since their elevation to the Politburo. If Trump’s first term was rich in informal channels between China and the United States, under Trump 2.0, China’s greatest hope might be Elon Musk, who has multiple business interests in China and whose electric vehicle company, Tesla, has a factory in Shanghai—at least for as long as he remains on good terms with the U.S. president.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, October 2024

 

No Reverse Kissinger

Amid all the uncertainty that Trump 2.0 will bring, the last thing that Putin and Xi are worried about is Washington’s ability to orchestrate a real split between their countries, despite Trump’s promise to do so on the campaign trail.

First of all, whether Trump can negotiate a deal over Ukraine that satisfies Putin remains to be seen. If the Kremlin’s core concerns aren’t addressed, Moscow may well keep fighting, and the whole plan to improve ties with the Kremlin at the expense of Beijing will be uncertain. Even if all parties reach a deal over Ukraine and Trump eases U.S. sanctions against Russia, the toxic cloud around the Russian economy will not dissipate immediately. Providing Moscow with additional cash flows will require European buy-in, which is by no means guaranteed, since many capitals remain skeptical of Putin’s Russia and don’t want to return to the prewar era of economic dependency.

Russia has become very dependent on China economically, with 40 percent of Russian imports coming from China and 30 percent of Russian exports going there over the last two years. This dependency is deepening, and it cannot be undone overnight. Reversing the dependency would also require coordinated efforts by Americans and Europeans to increase bilateral trade with Russia, which is hard to envisage under Trump.

Finally, Putin and Xi know that this will be Trump’s final term and that he could easily be followed by a president who would reverse any deal reached under the Republican president. Both Xi and Putin, in contrast, plan to stay in power well beyond 2029, when Trump’s term will end. Apart from the personal relationship between the two autocrats, their common mistrust of Washington and their hopes of becoming more powerful in an emerging multipolar order—at the United States’ expense—are likely to provide a strong enough foundation to keep the Sino-Russian partnership stable and growing.

 

For updates click hompage here