- 2018-10-18
The "New Romance of the Three Kingdoms" in the United States, Russia and China
If you think that Trump's cold and hot toward China and Russia are just a whim, or just his personal feelings, then you are wrong. Although Trump is a eloquent "big mouth", he is well thought out and well prepared when it comes to how the United States treats China and Russia as a geopolitical grand strategy.
"Never force China and Russia to unite"
As early as the early days of the election announcement in the summer of 2015, Trump said in an interview with reporters: "You can't let everyone hate you. Now the whole world hates us. I have heard a sentence for many, many years. That is: Never force Russia and China to unite, and Obama has already done this."
A year later, he reiterated this meaning in a press conference: "When I was young, I studied history and always heard one sentence: You should never do anything that can unite Russia and China. Look, they Now they are really united. They have never gotten so close as they are now. Russia is selling oil to China. We are forcing them to get to this point."
On English forums, ordinary netizens are also enthusiastically discussing the mystery of "Why Trump is so pro-Russian and anti-China". A netizen with the online name "Abc1986" believes that there are two reasons: first, Russia no longer poses a threat to the United States economically, and China will surpass the United States economically, thus posing a real threat; second, special Lampe’s pro-Russian and anti-China racial factors are also hard to explain: For white Americans, Russia is culturally closer, while China is completely alien.
Jeet Heer, the senior editor of the US "New Republic" magazine, also believes that the reason why Trump is so keen on uniting Russia to fight China is that in addition to economic and geopolitical considerations, there are indeed racial factors, because Russia It is a white country, and the Chinese are another race.
Hill cites two examples: First, the 2012 tweet by Trump is well known-"Global warming is a scam made by the Chinese to make American manufacturing uncompetitive. "Second, Trump often subconsciously regards Asian Americans born in the United States as foreigners. In 2015, when a Harvard student with an Asian face corrected Trump's statement ("South Korea did not pay any money for US military protection"), Trump rudely interrupted him and asked: "You are Not from South Korea?" The college student replied: "No, I was born in Texas and grew up in Colorado." (Texas and Colorado are both American states-Editor's Note)
In my opinion, the more important reason is the sentence Trump himself repeatedly emphasized: "Never force China and Russia to unite." Perhaps, it is precisely because of this sentence that Trump dared to withstand the anti-Russian pressure from the U.S. government and opposition, and did not hesitate to say that he would improve US-Russian relations after he took office? Perhaps it is precisely because of this sentence that Trump not only kept beating China during the campaign, but also broke the convention to talk with Tsai Ing-wen on the phone during his designation period and nominated a number of hard-liners against China into the cabinet?
A Hundred Years of Game History of the Three Kingdoms
No matter what the real reason is, if Trump continues to follow the road of uniting Russia and resisting China after he is sworn in, then this will be an earth-shaking change in the "Three Kingdoms" of the United States, China and Russia in the past century, because the United States And Russia (and its predecessor, the Soviet Union) have never worked hand in hand against China in the past 100 years.
The opening sentence of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is probably familiar to many Chinese: "Speaking of the general trend of the world, we must unite for a long time, and we must divide for a long time." If we understand "divide" and "combination" here as strategic cooperation and confrontation between countries , Then, this sentence seems to be applicable to the recent century of the world.
Since the "October Revolution" 100 years ago, the global geopolitical landscape has been ever-changing. However, looking back at the 100-year history of the three countries of the United States, China and the Soviet Union (Russia), there are about these few permutations:
After the First World War, many Western countries dealt with the newly formed Soviet Union. In China, after the death of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek was pro-Soviet at first, and after 1927 he was clearly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist;
During World War II, the United States, the Soviet Union and China formed an alliance against Germany, Italy and Japan;
After the establishment of Red China in 1949, China and the Soviet Union dealt with the United States;
In the 1960s, China and the Soviet Union split openly. Although the Soviet leader Khrushchev proposed that the Soviet Union and the United States "peaceful coexistence", there is still an irreconcilable contradiction between the United States and the Soviet Union: "You want to destroy me, I want to evolve you." , Naturally there is no way to talk about the joint control of China;
After Nixon's visit to China in 1972, the United States and China joined hands against the Soviet Union;
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States and Russia had a honeymoon period, but Russian President Yeltsin did not join forces with the United States to deal with China. Later, due to Kosovo, Chechnya and other issues, Russia-US relations began to crack;
After Putin was elected President of Russia in 2000, due to NATO’s eastward expansion and other factors, the United States and Russia gradually became hostile. After Russia annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian territory, the United States led the West to sanction Russia, while China and Russia gradually approached...
Will Putin be on Trump's "chariot"?
In 2017, one hundred years after the "October Revolution", the new US President Trump intends to change his subversive gameplay and try a new strategy that the United States has never tried in 100 years: uniting Russia against China.
The question is: Can Trump completely reverse the global geopolitical situation like Nixon did when he united China to fight the Soviet Union?
United Russia against China, since it is a "alliance", it cannot be "shaven and picky", provided that Putin also hates China like Trump. Nixon was able to successfully unite China against the Soviet Union because of Mao Zedong's hatred of "Soviet revisionism", no less than the United States' hatred of the Soviet Union.
In my opinion, the success of Trump's new gameplay in the fight against China with Russia depends on the following factors:
First of all, it depends on whether Putin is willing to cooperate with Trump and jointly deal with China. It is one thing to help Trump, who promised to improve the relationship between the United States and Russia, be elected. It is another thing to board Trump's specially-built "chariot" aimed at China. The relationship between Russia and China is good now. Although there is no alliance, not an alliance, and there are various contradictions between the two neighboring countries, the current Russia-China relationship is definitely not the Soviet-China relationship that hated each other in the 1960s and 1970s. The reasons for cooperation between the two countries far outweigh the reasons for confrontation. At least for now, I don’t see any strong motivation for Putin, a veteran of political circles and a geopolitical “master,” to go with Trang, who is about to step down in four or eight years. Commonwealth cooperation to jointly combat China. Petr Akopov, a columnist for the Russian online newspaper Vzglyad, also believes that given the geopolitical interests of Russia and China in Eurasia, Trump's strategy of trying to divorce Russia-China relations will not work.
Second, it depends on the extent to which Trump's personal will can override the United States' national interests and power checks and balances. In fact, none of the previous U.S. presidents of Trump did not know the admonition of “Don’t let China and Russia join forces”, nor did they fail to realize that with China’s rise to become the world’s second largest economy, the United States and China can only The prospect of becoming a strategic adversary, but why since the beginning of the 21st century, the United States and Russia have not only not approached, they have drifted away? This is actually more worth pondering. In my opinion, the reason is nothing more than the conflicts of national interests between the United States and Russia (for example, on the issues of Ukraine, Syria, etc.) far more than reciprocity, and also more than the conflicts of national interests between the United States and China. In addition, don’t underestimate the extent to which the “Russian Hacking Gate” incident has damaged the legitimacy of Trump’s election victory, and the extent to which it restricts how far he can go to improve US-Russian relations in the future. Although the Republican Party controls both houses of Congress, there are also many hawks in the Republican Party. Although the post of President of the United States has great diplomatic independence, in the atmosphere of strong anti-Russian sentiment in the United States, Trump It is also difficult to persuade the U.S. ruling and opposition parties to sacrifice U.S. national interests to cater to Moscow.
Finally, it also depends on how China responds, including the countermeasures before, during and after the establishment of the "US-Russian Anti-China Alliance" (assuming that such an alliance can be established). Compared with the countries that form alliances, the countries targeted by such alliances have relatively little choice, but they are not completely helpless. For example, during the "honeymoon period" of the Sino-Soviet period in the 1950s, the United States tried to separate the Sino-Soviet relations, Nixon and Kyrgyzstan. Singh finally succeeded in uniting China and resisting the Soviet Union, which shows that many of the US strategies for alienation are quite effective.
What role did Kissinger play?
Quite strangely, shortly after Trump was elected, Kissinger, the designer of Nixon’s anti-Soviet strategy and former U.S. Secretary of State, went to Trump Tower in New York on November 17 last year and met with Trump. Discussed the issues of China, Russia, Iran and the European Union. About half a month later, Kissinger visited China and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. After leaving China, he immediately flew to Russia for a secret visit to Russia. It is said that he met Russian President Putin.
What did this geopolitical master talk about with Trump, Xi Jinping, and Putin? There are many rumors, but no one knows the true content. There is even speculation on the Internet that Trump's idea of uniting Russia to fight China is actually a trick of Kissinger's support.
Even more bizarre is that on the day Kissinger was talking with Xi Jinping in Beijing, Trump answered Tsai Ing-wen's call.
It’s also weird that shortly after Trump’s call with Tsai Ing-wen, some Chinese social media circulated a very long "Fu Ying Speech" (which is said to be Fu Ying’s speech at the 2016 Sanya Finance International Forum). Speech. Fu Ying was once the Chinese ambassador to the UK, and is now the director of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress of China-Editor's Note). The content is roughly three parts: the first part is about the content of Kissinger’s talks with Xi Jinping during his visit to Beijing, and the second part It is the observation and judgment of Fu Ying's trip to the United States. The third part talks about how China should respond to Trump's China policy.
Later, Caijing Magazine, the organizer of the Sanya Financial International Forum, and Fu Ying both came out to refute the rumors. Allegedly, Fu Ying said that the rumor "seems to be made up by someone who is more knowledgeable."
However, no matter who made up the "Fu Ying's speech" on the Internet, some people are willing to spend the time and energy to fabricate it, or Fu Ying actually feels it is necessary to come out to refute the rumors. This in itself shows that Trump is fighting against China with Russia. A series of words and deeds really shocked China and awakened the daydreams of the public or invisible "Chuan fans" of the Chinese government and the opposition.