Trump’s “Reverse Kissinger” is wishful thinking
More than six months into his second term, US President Donald Trump has shown a willingness to revive an old geopolitical fantasy: that the United States can pry Russia away from China in a modern-day reprise of Kissinger’s Cold War diplomacy. Yet unlike in the 1970s, today’s Moscow and Beijing are bound by converging strategic interests, mutual dependence, and a shared hostility toward western dominance.
September 27, 2025 -
Lucinda Ritchie
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Articles and CommentaryIssue 5 2025Magazine
Rumour has it that US President Donald Trump went to visit former secretary of state and political theorist Henry Kissinger on his deathbed in 2023. During that visit, Kissinger is supposed to have given the president a piece of advice: do not let Russia and China get too close. Kissinger should know. He famously orchestrated a thaw in Sino-American relations in the 1970s on behalf of President Richard Nixon, isolating the Soviet Union on the international stage. Whether this meeting actually took place is debatable, but it is clear that the idea has captured Trump’s imagination. Today, commentators have speculated that Trump’s readiness to offer the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, concessions in peace negotiations earlier this year were inspired by this strategic vision. However, the horse has already bolted and Trump now appears to be losing patience with Putin’s intransigence – and bombing of nursing homes in Ukraine.
The Russia-China partnership is now too deeply entrenched and mutually beneficial for either party to quit and the US has little to offer without weakening its own hand. For Kissinger in the 1970s, his masterstroke move was predicated on exploiting existing fractures between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union, rather than creating them. Ideological differences between Nikita Khruschev and Mao Zedong escalated in 1961 with Mao’s formal denunciation of Soviet communism as “revisionist”. Before the end of the decade the two were at war. Although there was never a formal declaration of war between the USSR and the PRC, the bloody conflict over Zhenbao (or Damanksy) Island dragged on for seven months. Against this backdrop, American diplomatic overtures to China fell on ready ears.
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