The wise way to ‘un-unite’ Russia and China

In October 2024, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump remarked, “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, too. I have to un-unite them.”

Now, President Trump’s recent flurry of diplomatic outreach to Russia and the open rift opening between Washington and Kyiv may be the first step in an American effort to distance Moscow from Beijing. 

For all its drawbacks, the idea of conciliating Russia to wean it from China is strategically sound. It would help undermine what some call a “quasi-alliance” between Beijing and Moscow while allowing Washington to focus attention and resources on its rivalry with China.

This would be the reverse of Henry Kissinger’s Cold War accomplishment when he facilitated a rapprochement with Beijing in the early 1970s to isolate Moscow. Current conditions, however, make the likelihood of successfully driving a wedge between China and Russia low and the costs of trying high. 

An alternative approach – one rooted in history and involving increasing pressure on both Moscow and Beijing – would enhance the chances of success and lower the associated costs. 

Despite irritants in the relationship, Russia will not readily walk away from the benefits China provides. In addition to being Moscow’s most capable defense partner and leading trade partner, Beijing shares its ideological hostility toward the West, helps it de-dollarize international transactions to evade sanctions, shares surveillance and censorship know-how, and provides a secure “rear” along their shared land border.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, moreover, enjoy an unusually strong personal relationship. And while the conflict in Ukraine has dramatically deepened Russia’s reliance on China, the two have been strengthening ties since the mid-1980s and were close partners well before Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.

Nonetheless, Washington has plenty to offer Moscow at the negotiating table: it can pressure Ukraine to relinquish territory and accept a ceasefire, it can bar Kyiv from joining NATO, and it can lift economic sanctions on Russia.

Without a resurgence of Western military aid to Ukraine, however, Russia’s position on the battlefield essentially guarantees that it will keep the Ukrainian territory it occupies and that Kyiv will be unable to join NATO. 

Moscow is also unlikely to mortgage its relationship with Beijing in exchange for sanctions relief. Should Russia be open to distancing itself from China, it would likely demand intolerably costly concessions – for example, reorganizing Europe’s security architecture in a way that existentially damages NATO. 

This is why some argue that driving a wedge between China and Russia is destined to fail and should not even be attempted. Counterintuitively, however, a more confrontational approach may better position Washington to distance Moscow from Beijing over the longer term and at a lower cost. 

It was American sticks – not carrots – that helped exacerbate tensions between China and Russia during the Cold War years before Kissinger exploited their split. While facing down the Soviets in Europe and the Middle East, the Dwight Eisenhower administration adopted a policy of firmness toward China.

It committed to defending Taiwan, maintained a trade embargo against Beijing and encouraged the Nationalists on Taiwan to conduct raids against the mainland. US military and economic pressure forced the Chinese to make progressively greater demands of the Soviets that the latter could not accommodate and which bred resentment in Moscow.

Eisenhower’s policy of pressure also helped to expose and aggravate divergent Chinese and Russian interests over Taiwan. In 1958, Chinese leader Mao Zedong initiated a crisis over Taiwan in part out of frustration with Washington’s defense commitment to the island.

Beijing’s actions, which provoked oblique American nuclear threats against China, angered and alarmed Moscow. The Soviet Union feared becoming entrapped in a nuclear war with Washington over Taiwan, which was of negligible interest to Moscow.

The crisis led Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev to rethink Russia’s relationship with China as well, including crucially the wisdom of providing Beijing military assistance.

As the crisis unfolded, Moscow began to delay transferring nuclear technology to Beijing, and the following year, it reneged entirely on providing a nuclear weapon prototype. By 1960, the Soviet Union withdrew all its experts from China and the Sino-Soviet split was underway. 

Today, US pressure on both states would aim to aggravate their already divergent interests in Ukraine.

This would involve reconciling with Kyiv and doubling down on military aid to it while threatening increased economic penalties on Beijing not only for providing the dual-use supplies that have powered Moscow’s war machine but also for sales of civilian goods that have minimized the war’s toll on Russian society. 

Trump could even make tariffs on Chinese imports dependent on it dramatically reducing exports to Russia. Doing so would increase Russia’s need for material aid while making China more reluctant to provide it.

While the conflict in Ukraine has become a vital interest for Putin, for China it is – much as Khrushchev viewed Taiwan – a nuisance. Beijing has an interest in helping Russia avoid defeat, but it is loath to incur major costs on Moscow’s behalf. 

This is why China has largely refrained from providing lethal aid, banned sanctioned Russian energy tankers from its large ports and established novel ways of evading US sanctions, especially on its financial institutions.

Increasing pressure on China and Russia would generate friction between the two that could be exploited later at the negotiating table. A Russia facing a richly supplied and unfettered Ukrainian military and increasingly resentful of China for withholding critical aid would still require concessions to wean it from Beijing.

But the concessions required would be fewer, less significant and more tolerable.  And they could generate the kind of outsized strategic dividends in Washington’s competition with Beijing that Kissinger’s rapprochement did in last century’s rivalry with the Soviets.

Andrew Taffer is a research fellow with the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the US National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies. This essay represents his personal views and not those of the US National Defense University, the US Department of Defense, or the US government.