MJ Akbar
IN 1970, at the coldest point of the Cold War, when American confidence had been shaken by virtual defeat in Vietnam but its military might remained unquestionable, President Nixon realised that the partnership of the Soviet Union and China added up to far more than the sum of their parts.
His National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, playing a strategic role akin to Ajit Doval for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, went on a secret mission to Beijing which eventually broke the Russia-China axis. In another decade, this development, compounded by grievous mistakes like the misadventure of Afghanistan, led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
History, unlike popular imagination, does not do exact parallels. 2025 is not 1970. Communism is a fiction in China. Russia and China are nationalist powers today, not tied by some ideological umbilical cord. President Xi described China’s ties with Russia as unbreakable during his visit to Moscow in March 2023. He also said he had a peace plan for Ukraine. Two years later, Putin is discussing peace with Trump, not Xi, because Washington has leverage over Ukraine. China had good intentions, which are always a variable commodity.
Trump is transparent
Trump, who does not get camouflage, was candid after the telephone conversation. He wants to disrupt, if not break, the Russia-China entente. He is transparent; his administration is realistic. The true challenge to America over the next three decades will come from China, not Russia. China has the economic heft and is picking up pace in high-tech innovation. It has invested heavily in a global embrace.
Xi believes in a Chinese destiny as the pre-eminent world power, which he is confident can be achieved without war. He is prepared for war if war becomes necessary but would prefer a less volatile route towards his objective. He knows that the collateral benefits of economic domination are regional subjugation. China cannot be the primary global superpower if it cannot control the Himalayas to its south or exploit the vast mineral wealth of Russian Siberia to its north-west.
Russia does not have the demography or the tech for such ambitions. It has security concerns, which are legitimate. Four decades ago, Moscow was impotent when its strategic borders crumbled under an onslaught led by America and Western Europe. Kyiv is far closer than the Berlin Wall. In Washington’s estimate, if such concerns are addressed, there can be a return of détente and America can focus its sizeable energies towards limiting the dragon’s firepower.
China breakthrough
That is the confrontation of the 21st century. America fought out of isolationism to make the 20th its century. It must defeat the Chinese siege if it wants to preserve its superpower citadel. Nixon’s breakthrough came with his visit to Beijing and a meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong. A Trump visit to Moscow would be less dramatic than a Putin trip to Washington in 2026; but either way it would be eventful, spreading its impact over the coming decade. Russia can buy a Contract for Peace because it has no more wars left to fight. Since we are becoming dependent on the Iron Chancellor for our corrective dose of intellect, another quotation may not be amiss: preventive war, he said, is like committing suicide for fear of death.
NATO was created to challenge the Soviet Union. America’s NATO allies became flatulent, but that did not prove deleterious because the potential of Soviet hegemony was punctured without a direct war that might have turned nuclear. But it required an economic and geopolitical alliance. America will seek allies in its confrontation with China but call them friends to avoid the charge of militarism. The terminology will be less abrasive. The world is as hard as it ever was, but language has softened. A rose by any other name is still a rose. So is a thorn.
Richard Nixon, architect and mason of the China breakthrough, never got the Nobel. It went to Henry Kissinger in 1973, not for a secret trip to Beijing but for protracted negotiations with Vietnam to finish the paperwork of a lost war. That’s what happens when the West European establishment does not like your politics, or your personality. But half-a-century later the world remembers Nixon, not who won the Nobel in 1973.
