China’s leaders have probably enjoyed watching former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson suffer the slings and arrows of the Senate confirmation gauntlet from members of the President’s own party. With Tillerson’s nomination set for a vote before the full Senate this week, C-SPAN will be must-see TV for China’s foreign policy establishment.
Tillerson’s tough stance on Beijing’s militarism in the South China Sea – paired with President Donald Trump’s willingness to review U.S. policy toward Taiwan – has clearly ruffled feathers across China, prompting state-run media there to warn the United States to “prepare for a military clash.”
Added to China’s concerns are the warm words between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Just as the United States played the “China card” against the Soviets during the Cold War, Trump appears to recognize the benefits of holding a “Russia card” in his deck of foreign policy options for dealing with China.
Closer ties between Washington and Moscow could provide the missing piece of the containment puzzle, which eluded the Obama administration, to counter Chinese territorial ambitions. Russian cooperation would allow Trump to build a “Great Wall” of U.S.-friendly countries around China – with Russia blocking China in the north, India and Vietnam in the south, and Japan and the United States to the east.
Chinese foreign policy experts, realizing this possibility, have urged their leaders to “closely watch developments in U.S.-Russia and Japan-Russia ties.”
Of course, Trump must first work things out with the Russian president. With his confirmation to be the next Secretary of State all but assured, Tillerson’s tough negotiating skills will be key to establishing better relations with Russia, without allowing Putin to get the better of the deal.
For Russia, the gambit with the United States works both ways. Largely overlooked by American foreign policy experts is Moscow’s self interest in using U.S. influence to check the rapidly expanding power of its Chinese neighbor. The idea that Putin favored Trump over Clinton for reasons of ego or attempted manipulation reflects a lack of understanding of geopolitics and reveals an ignorance of Sino-Russian history.
Russia – with its 2,600-mile border with China, the world’s sixth-longest international frontier –has long fretted over Beijing’s desire to recapture border lands long ago seized by the tsars. Underlining Putin’s paranoia is the roughly 100 million Chinese standing opposite just 6 million Russians in Siberia.
China’s leadership will inevitably adjust to Trump’s rejiggering of security alliances and new partnerships. Beijing will focus on securing its southern flank by further integrating large swaths of Southeast Asia into its economy through regional investment. Whenever possible, China will also drive wedges between Washington and its traditional allies, likely starting with President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who has expressed support for improving Sino-Filipino relations.
We should further expect China to respond to encirclement, in Sun Tzu’s words, by “devising stratagems” of its own. As Beijing helped develop Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program as a counterbalance to India’s own nuclear weapons, Chinese leaders are likely to bolster governments hostile to U.S. and Russian interests. The potential for covert transfers of Chinese nuclear weapons technology to the Middle East and other parts of the world to counter a new Russo-American partnership should not be dismissed.
Critics of Trump’s policies toward Russia should step back and take another look at the rapidly evolving world of power politics. While Putin may be a “thug” and an “untrustworthy” partner in the eyes of many, necessity knows no law. Washington needs to prepare for the day when China – a superpower more powerful than the Soviet Union at its zenith – moves to displace U.S. influence around the globe, potentially through military aggression. To do so, the United States needs the experience and nerve that Secretary of State Tillerson brings to the job.
George David Banks is executive vice president of the American Council for Capital Formation and a former CIA analyst, State Department diplomat, and White House adviser under President George W. Bush.
