Splitting Xi From Putin: A Comfortable Delusion » The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

Responding to last weekend’s massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine, Donald Trump complained that Vladimir Putin had gone “absolutely crazy.” Fascinatingly, Trump also concluded that “something has happened” to Putin. But anyone who has watched recent developments can only conclude that the bombardment of Ukrainian cities this past weekend is perfectly consistent with the direction Putin has been taking, a direction that he intends to keep on taking, so long as he can get away with it. And, by cozying up further with China, he clearly hopes to get away with it until all his objectives have been achieved. (RELATED: Russia’s Aerial Assault on Ukraine)

Perhaps, then, it’s time that we said goodbye to the illusion that, if only we find the right enticements, we can split Russia from China. For many months now we’ve heard that this is a major objective of our push for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, that beyond Trump’s simple and, I believe, sincere desire to “end the killing,” there’s also a plan, one that aims to flip Putin from his connection to China and use Russia as a counterweight to Xi Jinping’s ambitions to dominate the Pacific. (RELATED: Should US Peel Russia Away From China?)

This has been presented by its supporters in the foreign policy establishment as a “reverse Nixon,” referencing how Nixon’s China pivot used Beijing to bring pressure on the Soviets. However, this seriously overstates Nixon and Kissinger’s achievement. The gulf between the two great communist powers already existed, indeed to the point of a progressively uglier war of words and even the occasional border clash. Nixon’s real achievement lay in selling a rapprochement with Mao’s China to his own conservative base. Fundamentally, Nixon didn’t change the dynamics of the relationship between Russia and China; he simply exploited existing divisions. (RELATED: Nixon–Mao, Trump–Putin, and Triangular Diplomacy)

The belief that Putin can be “flipped” may appeal to Trump, the real-estate developer, and, in fairness, the illusion of bringing post-Soviet Russia into our orbit is not simply Trump’s alone — it’s been a commonplace for decades. Reflecting on the most recent Victory Day parade through Red Square, I find myself saddened by might-have-beens and simultaneously reminded of how delusional our policy approach to Russia has been since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Not quite 20 years ago, I travelled to Russia as part of a Department of Energy delegation dealing with how to best secure Russia’s nuclear arsenal from terrorists. During my brief time in Moscow, I saw glimpses of a Russia that genuinely wanted to become closer to the U.S. and Europe. Our delegation’s Russian counterparts seemed genuinely interested in pursuing cooperation across the most sensitive areas of nuclear security. And around the edges of our meetings, taking the opportunity to explore the city, it seemed that Muscovites were genuinely excited at the idea of becoming a truly international city and ready to embrace Western values.

In retrospect, those were days filled with such delusions, delusions that have persisted in the years since, and not just in the minds of very minor folk like myself.

George W. Bush famously observed of Putin: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.” And then Bush continued, “I was able to get a sense of his soul.” Bush would come to regret this remark, which became a byword for foreign policy naïveté. But it wasn’t just Bush. Shortly after becoming Barack Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden called for a “reset” in U.S. relations with Russia. Not long afterward, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton endorsed this notion very publicly, ceremonially giving a red “reset button” to her Russian counterpart.

In the midst of his 2012 re-election campaign, Obama was caught on an open microphone sending a message to Putin via then-Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, asking that Putin give him “space” until after the election, when he would have more “flexibility” to deal with contentious issues. Criticized for this by his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, Obama dismissively countered, “The 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

So, Trump is not the first to invest in a relationship with Putin, and not the first to be disappointed.

The trouble is that what Putin wants has never coincided with what the U.S. wants, at least not when one moves past vapid generalities. Russia has never recovered psychologically from the collapse of the Soviet Union. One can point to Putin’s accumulation of vast personal wealth, one can observe that he’s surrounded himself with kleptocrats, and yet there has always been something more at work. (RELATED: Trumpian Geoeconomics)

Putin’s ‘Russian Greatness’ Objective

Bluntly stated, Putin’s Russia needs to be able to see itself as a great power, not just “Canada with nukes,” to repeat a frequent and painfully apposite jibe. The uncomfortable truth, of course, is that absent its nuclear arsenal and its conventional forces, Russia’s place on the world stage would approximate Canada’s, or Italy’s, or perhaps Brazil’s, respectable to be sure, but only that. But for Russians, the comedown has been profoundly humbling. Even their vast fossil energy revenues have scarcely assuaged the sense of diminishment.

One of the main levers of Putin’s hold on power lies in this fact, and in his ability to promote an abiding “Russian greatness” narrative. Hence, the recent and ostentatious celebration of Russia’s role in World War II. Hence, the need for a resolution of the war in Ukraine that Putin can present to the Russian people as a similarly decisive victory. Anything less, any “deal” that can’t be spun as something akin to Ukraine’s unconditional surrender, utterly fails to meet the need of this carefully woven narrative. Furthermore, going into the war’s fourth year, and having suffered appalling casualties, Putin needs a settlement that justifies the nation’s sacrifices.

It’s scarcely accidental, then, that by far the most prominent guest at the recent Red Square Victory Day parade was none other than China’s Xi Jinping. Only Xi, after all, can give Putin the economic support he needs, above all, a ready market for Russian fossil energy, the functional equivalent of sanctions, either current or potential. Only Xi can provide a ready alternative to all the things now no longer obtainable from Europe. But more than all that, only Xi can support a conclusion to the Ukraine war that validates Putin’s need for, if not a decisive outcome, then one that can be presented as such to the Russian people.

If Xi adheres to his announced timeline for a “resolution” of the Taiwan question by 2027, there’s no way that “flipping” Putin materially changes the military equation along the Pacific rim. Even if Putin were so inclined, we neither need nor want Russia’s nuclear weapons in, God forbid, a nuclear war with China. And it’s frankly ridiculous to expect that Russian conventional forces might be deployed in Siberia for the purpose of deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan. And if there were even a hint of such a grand Nixonian reversal, Xi has tools with which to punish Putin directly, tools that we utterly lack.

In the final analysis, all we really have to offer Putin is an end to the fighting and the dying, and we kid ourselves if we think that this matters as much to him as it does to us. This weekend’s missile barrage should serve as a stark reminder of his indifference. When Trump wonderingly remarks that “something has happened” with Putin, he simply gives voice to an increasingly unsustainable delusion, the delusion that Putin wants peace on anything other than his own terms.

It’s no wonder, then, that Xi is smiling these days. One way or another, the Ukraine war will end, as wars of attrition inevitably must, and likely enough, as Hemingway observed about bankruptcy, “first gradually, then suddenly.” It may be that one side will collapse, it may be both. But either way, there will be only one smiling face if things continue on their present course.

And that face will be Xi Jinping’s.

READ MORE from James H. McGee:

Who Won World War II?

Are We on the Verge of World War III?

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James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counterterrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field.

Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A soon-to-be-published sequel, the Zebras from Minsk, finds the Reprisal team fighting against Chinese and Russian-backed terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges from West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited.