Trump, Xi and Putin: a dysfunctional love triangle of global significance
A deal between the US and Russia is not the same as dividing Moscow and Beijing but is more likely to “un-unite” Europe and the US and to further weaken the transatlantic alliance.
Reports of a phone call between the US president-elect, Donald Trump, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin (although quickly denied by the Kremlin) have given a first flavour of the tone and direction of their relationship in the immediate future. According to the Washington Post, Trump spoke with Putin on November 7, warning him against any escalation in Ukraine and reminding him of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”.
Regardless of whether it happened or not, any – if even only indirect – exchange of messages between the pair should be heeded by America’s allies in the west, as well as Russia’s major partner in the east: China’s Xi Jinping. And there has been plenty of such messaging over the past few months.
Putin, earlier on the day of the alleged phone call, gave a long address at the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club thinktank in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Unsurprisingly, the speech – and Putin’s answers to questions from the audience afterwards – were anti-western and full of confidence that a new world order was now in “the phase of genuine creation”.
Equally unsurprising, Putin did not fail to flatter Trump as a "courageous man" and noted that he would consider any proposals from Trump ending what Putin called the "Ukrainian crisis" and for restoring US-Russia relations. But he then spent considerably more time making the case for the relationship between Russia and China -- and here his audience was less the incoming US president and more Putin's old friend Xi Jinping, the president of China.
The reason for this goes back to one of Trump’s messages to Putin and Xi. Trump told Tucker Carlson at a campaign event on October 31 that he would work to “un-unite” Russia and China. Trump implied that the two are "natural enemies" because Russia has vast territory that China covets for its population.
This is not a new argument. Russia and China were engaged in a series of violent conflicts with each other for several months in 1969 along their long land border in Siberia. This followed the Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950, early 1960s, and preceded the US opening to China under then-president Richard Nixon in February 1972.
In contrast to Nixon, Trump looks set to try to reset US relations with Moscow rather than Beijing. While it’s hard to imagine a similar split between Russia and China today, Trump’s apparent desire to exploit discord between Russia and China to the advantage of the US should not be dismissed as completely unrealistic either.
If we take Putin and Xi by their respective words, there is little daylight between them for Trump to exploit. That said, the relationship between Russia and China really is primarily one between their current leaders and lacks much of the institutional depth that other alliances have.
There is a lot of resentment of China in Russia in both public and policy circles. Russians remain wary of China's growing role in Central Asia, suspicious of its potential renewed revisionism regarding borders, and ultimately resentful of the fact that Moscow is now a junior partner to Beijing.
These are potentially all issues that Trump could use to drive a wedge between Russia and China, but only if there was a more substantial deal on offer for Putin. That's why un-uniting Russia and China is closely linked to Trump's Ukraine policy, and the obvious dangers it implies for Ukraine and the west.
A Trump-brokered agreement would likely involve the recognition of Russian territorial gains in Ukraine since 2014 would be recognised, complete sanctions relief and broad international rehabilitation granted to Moscow, as well as a down-scaling of the US commitment to NATO and no prospect of further enlargement of the alliance.
All of this might be something worth considering for the Kremlin, especially in light of the alternative, hinted at by Trump when he allegedly reminded Putin in their call on November 7 of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”.
Given that Trump had already talked to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky the day before, the likely deal-making, thus, has clearly begun. Putin signalled as much when he declared that " what has been said in terms of trying to restore relations with Russia, to help end the Ukrainian crisis, in my opinion at least deserves attention." Yet, he was also quick to point out that "relations between Russia and the People's Republic of China...have reached a historical high", based on trust and "personal, friendly – genuinely friendly – relations" with Xi.
This is a clear sign of Putin hedging his bets, and potentially trying to improve his bargaining position vis-à-vis both Washington and Beijing. While it does not on its own immediately doom Trump's idea of un-uniting Russia and China, there are a number of other factors that make it unlikely to succeed.
Trump might get a deal with Putin, but whether Putin would stick to it even in the medium term is questionable. Putin us much more likely to simply play both sides in the hope that Russia might in this way become a third peer alongside China and the US in an emerging new international order. This is of course a complete fantasy given the size of the Russian economy alone, but unlikely to affect Putin's calculations who has longed for restoring Russia to the super-power status of the Soviet Union.
An American opening to Moscow, as opposed to Beijing, is also difficult to imagine because America’s European partners are unlikely to go along with it. Some, like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico might find the idea attractive in general, but even Fico has recently cosied up to Xi more than to Putin and publicly supported a joint Chinese-Brazilian peace plan on Ukraine.
Germany and France, among others in the EU, are more likely to want to make a deal with China than with Russia for economic reasons -- they have largely overcome their dependence on Russian oil and gas, but not on China as an export market. Trump might break European unity over Ukraine, but this is not necessarily going to get him closer to breaking up the relationship between Russia and China.
Finally, Beijing is not going to sit idly by while Trump tries to drive a wedge between Russia and China. Despite Putin's efforts to build parallel relations with North Korea and Iran, Xi retains plenty of leverage over Russia and is going to use it to keep Russia on side. While there are differences between Moscow and Beijing, they both share a world view of a United States in terminal decline, now further accelerated by the upheaval expected from a second Trump term. For China in particular, preventing the US form completely pivoting to the Indo-Pacific will be a key priority, and not allowing Trump to cut a deal with Putin at Xi's expense will be high on China's agenda.
Trump might still try to open up to Russia by striking a deal with Putin over Ukraine. However, a deal with Putin is not the same as dividing Russia and China. On the contrary, such a deal is more likely to un-unite Europe and the US and to further weaken the transatlantic alliance. Rather than making America great again, Trump will further hasten its decline by mistaking the destruction of what is left of the liberal international order with its reshaping according to US interests.
An earlier version of this article was published by The Conversation on 11 November 2024.
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