Grand Strategy

Befriending Russia or China isn't key. Making Russia and China hostile to each other is

American debates over how much to pivot away from Europe to Asia to prepare for war misses the point that it would be far better to have less of a need to prepare for great power war in Europe and Asia.

While I started my original blog to comment on the war on Islamist terrorism and what I anticipated as a showdown with Saddam's Iraq, I have long hoped America could get the frenemies with temporary benefits Russia and China to focus their aggressive tendencies on each other as enemies.

I often wrote about getting China to focus inland—both to face Russia which holds lots of Chinese territory and to seek trade security overland rather than building a fleet that could defeat the U.S. Navy to secure sea lines of communication. This also pulls India closer to the American alliance structure with more border tensions without actually creating a lethal overland Chinese threat to India because of India’s Himalayan “Long Walls.” That would be the best security path for Taiwan and for our other allies in the western Pacific and the Asia mainland.

And I've long wanted Russia to end its pointless hostility toward what had been a rapidly disarming NATO after the Cold War and instead focus on pivoting to Asia in order to protect their Far East territories it took from China during China's "Century of Humiliation"; and to maintain influence in their former Central Asian territories lost when the USSR collapsed in 1991 in the face of China's growing influence.

Achieving either objective could prompt the other to react in ways that make both objectives successful. If China and Russia face each other across hostile no-man's land borders, neither is posing much of a threat to our friends and allies near them.

Consider that China and Russia have tried to do the same thing. For decades, Russia armed China in ways that pointed China out to sea at America. Russia thought they were cleverly buying time to recover from the "catastrophe" of the collapse of the USSR. But over time, the Russians seemingly began to believe their own BS about the threat of a rapidly disarming NATO. Over time, Russia acted on the logic of their false belief and invaded Ukraine to get the first bits of their buffer zone without natural limits. We can claim giving Ukraine to Russia as a buffer will satisfy Russia’s security needs, but that is wrong. In the Cold War, the USSR had a buffer all the way to the Elbe River in the middle of German territory. They longed for the Rhine River.

As for China, becoming a partner without limits with Russia concealed their frenemy status. But is gave Russia part of their clever plan to cope with the collapse of the USSR; and ended Russian acceptance of a place in the Western world in favor of an angry policy of restoring its European empire that would increase friction with NATO and the West. When Russia wanted to go to war with Ukraine (and NATO and Satan, and whoever else threatened Holy Mother Russia), China was fine with it and trusted Russian claims it would be over fast. And when the war dragged on, China has given Russia enough to keep fighting—but not enough, and certainly no major weapons—to crush Ukraine. This has increased tensions between Europe and China. In addition, China takes advantage of the Western sanctions on Russia to insist on steep discounts on the oil it buys from Russia. Is Russia losing money overall to get China’s support? The major flaw in China's course of action is that the Winter War of 2022 has raised Western awareness of its defense industrial bases' inability to sustain a long war.

As China has alarmed neighbors to arm up and align with America, China's path to restoring its past glories as the massive Middle Kingdom at the expense of America and its allies has begun to decline. On the other hand, Russia's self defenestration through the Winter War of 2022 window to imperial glory has made Russia a temporarily more appealing target to signal China’s rise.

And Russia has found that its first major step west has not gone anywhere near what Putin planned. Even as China looms over Russia's Far East and makes gains influence in Central Asia, which Russia has tried to maintain as its backyard for eventual reincorporation into the empire. If Russia believes it can cut a real deal over Ukraine to end the hostility with NATO that has gotten way out of hand from its initial purpose of concealing Russian appeasement of China, Russia could pivot to Asia with its remaining strength and prepare to deter or defeat China's drive for influence or control of large chunks of Russian or former Soviet territory.

If America can pull this off, America will improve our security from conventional threats to a level not seen since 1913 when potential enemies had more pressing worries closer to home to deal with than America far across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

But as subsequent history shows, that doesn’t mean America can ignore those threats and hope others defend our interests for us. But it does mean that we could keep the threats at bay in the Old World with less effort than we ultimately made from 1917 to 1991.

NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.