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US-China relations
CommentUnited States
Terry Su
Terry Su

Opinion | Why won’t the US break up the China-Russia friendship? The answer is Europe

  • Taking a leaf out of Nixon’s book, Biden could drive a wedge between the US’ rivals using conciliation – only this time, with Russia, not China
  • The problem is that such an approach risks creating an integrated Europe, which may then seek autonomy from the US

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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Terry Su
The new year has begun with America looking to have it all. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer of an Orthodox Christmas ceasefire was rebuffed by Ukraine, and US President Joe Biden scorned Putin for “trying to find some oxygen” with the proposal.
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More recently, some heavyweight German lawmakers turned up in Taiwan, defying Beijing, while Japan has just agreed for British troops to be stationed in its territory, inviting expressions of displeasure from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

All this begets a simple question: isn’t it presumptuous of Washington to assume that it can play hard ball with Beijing and Moscow simultaneously and get its own way, while taking for granted the support of the European Union and Japan along the way?

Half a century ago, US president Richard Nixon took a U-turn on America’s China policy, breaking up the Washington-Moscow-Beijing geopolitical triangle. In the name of bringing China out of its “angry isolation”, his administration made a de facto ally out of the stalwart communist state which had fought a bloody war with the United States in Korea and was engaging in a proxy war with it in Vietnam – thus laying the foundation of the eventual collapse of the former Soviet Union.

Today, Washington faces a similar situation, with Russia and China having swapped their hierarchical positions. Beijing is now seen as the higher-up and Moscow as the one fighting a proxy war for it in Ukraine, according to some commentators applying history to analyses of current affairs.

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Beijing is playing an awkward No. 1, though, still dizzy from the speed with which it has shot to the top position, while Moscow remains steeped in self-regarding nostalgia for what it used to be not that long ago.

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