Days before Donald Trump was elected for his second term as US president in 2024, he pledged to “un-unite” Russia and China as he accused his predecessor, Joe Biden, of bringing them closer together. But his recent actions actually fall in line with the counterproductive policies of his predecessors that have encouraged the Russo-Chinese alliance.
It is no wonder that Chinese President Xi Jinping invited his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin just days after hosting Trump. It seems the two leaders will have a situation room meeting – catching up and coordinating in view of the results of the Xi-Trump summit.
The Iran war has given a powerful impetus to strengthening Russo-Chinese ties. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has made China critically reliant on Russian oil and gas supplies and thus helped Moscow fill up its coffers and get additional funds for its ongoing war on Ukraine.
In the first four months of this year, bilateral trade has jumped by nearly 20 percent. Cooperation in the energy sector is expected to expand, with Putin mentioning before his trip that there will be “a substantial step forward” in the oil and gas sphere.
Already last year, in September – three months after the Israeli assault on Iran – Chinese companies signed a memorandum with Russia’s energy giant Gazprom to expand the import of Russian gas through two pipelines from 48 to 56 billion cubic metres. The long-delayed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline is once again on the table. Continuing exports of Chinese parts and technology have also helped Russia’s military industry keep up with demand from the front line in Ukraine.
Beijing and Moscow may have a strong economic relationship, but what really unites them at the moment is their shared analysis of the US-led West and the danger it poses to the rest of the world. The perception of the US as a rogue and fundamentally irrational actor is naturally pulling them together.
But it wasn’t always this way. Several decades ago, the US had a very different posture and was actually successful in exploiting the differences between the USSR and China. Prompted by the Vietnam War catastrophe in the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon sought a detente with the USSR and courted China, gently nudging it towards reforms which changed the country beyond recognition.
Both strategies proved a huge success for US diplomacy in the long run, resulting in peaceful transitions in both the USSR and China towards political regimes that served US interests much better.
The Russian-Chinese alliance has never been a given. The Russian Empire took part in the scramble for China along with other Western colonial powers in the 19th century. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin helped the Chinese communists come to power in 1949, but soon after his death, the two communist giants became bitter rivals, accusing each other of revisionism.
Until the very last years of the USSR, Moscow saw Beijing more as a foe than a friend. The arrival of the unipolar, US-dominated world pushed them closer together, even while some mistrust persisted.
The actions of subsequent US administrations accelerated this process. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama pushed NATO expansion ever closer to Russian borders. Biden contributed to unleashing a proxy conflict – as former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it – in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Washington’s provocative rhetoric on Taiwan antagonised China.
Trump promised to do things differently, but quickly fell in line. He was supposed to end “Biden’s war” in Ukraine, as he called it, but did not do so. In fact, his policy with regard to this conflict has always been ambivalent.
During his first term, he championed the cause of derailing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was to deliver Russian gas to Western Europe, bypassing Ukraine; undermining this project contributed to the conflict. Trump’s current administration pushed for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but not too hard, so as not to upset the US military-industrial complex, which has seen windfall profits from the war. Meanwhile, he tried to strongarm China on trade, with limited results.
On Iran, Trump allowed himself to be swayed by neo-con Republicans, who are focused on supporting Israel in its increasingly genocidal military adventures in the Middle East. He started a war which he hoped would end in four to six weeks, but it is now in its third month with no prospect of a quick resolution.
China is watching both wars with a sense of alarm about the US and the West, by extension. Are they really so mad as to trigger the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, precipitating a global energy crisis, while simultaneously engaging in hair-raising brinkmanship with Russia, whose nuclear arsenal could destroy humanity? Are they really trying to do all the above while waging a trade war on the world’s largest economy – China itself?
Today, the scenes of destruction left behind by US and Israeli attacks on Iran, as well as the assassinations of its leaders, serve as a mighty incentive for Moscow and Beijing to coordinate actions and avoid separate deals with the US. The same attitude extends to the European Union in its current form, which they see as a puppet of one of the rival US factions, the Democrats.
Given Trump’s famously short span of attention, he may not even remember he once wanted to disunite China and Russia, but of course, the latter two do remember it well. Xi’s invitation to Putin on the heels of Trump’s visit is a powerful signal to the US that the Russo-Chinese alliance is stronger than ever.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
