When Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, voices suggested his administration might wind down the Ukraine conflict and pursue a foreign policy of restraint. The reality reveals something far different. Trump’s outreach to Russia is not Pat Buchanan style non-interventionism. It is a calculated attempt to use Russia as a geopolitical weapon against China and Iran, rooted in the same manipulative great power politics that has poisoned American foreign policy for generations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly proposed at February 2025 Riyadh talks that the United States could “partner with the Russians, geopolitically, on issues of common interest.” Keith Kellogg, Special Envoy for Ukraine, stated the goal bluntly at Munich Security Conference. “What we’re going to do is try to break this alliance,” he said, referring to Russia’s partnerships with China, Iran, and North Korea.
This is the Reverse Nixon strategy. Where Richard Nixon exploited the Sino-Soviet split to woo China from Moscow in 1972, Trump now seeks to pry Russia from Beijing. The intellectual godfather was Henry Kissinger, who personally advised Trump during his first term to improve relations with Russia to isolate China, essentially flipping his own famous triangular diplomacy.
The entire enterprise rests on fantasy.
The Reverse Nixon strategy has been gestating in Trump world since 2016. Michael Flynn was the earliest advocate. Before taking office, he communicated with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions. His deputy K.T. McFarland wrote that “Russia is key that unlocks door.” Flynn’s forced resignation after twenty-four days and the Mueller investigation killed the first term effort.
MAGA strategist Steve Bannon described the overture toward Russia in civilizational terms, viewing it as a necessary realignment to balance against China. “To me, the economic war with China is everything,” he declared in a 2017 interview with The American Prospect. Bannon has long argued that Russia and the United States share what he calls “Judeo-Christian” civilizational roots and should unite against the strategic threat of China—which he views as a godless, authoritarian hegemon in a zero-sum contest for global dominance.
For all the rhetoric about improving Russian relations, Trump’s first term delivered punitive actions that dramatically escalated tensions. His administration abandoned the Open Skies Treaty and the INF Treaty, dismantling critical arms control infrastructure. He supplied deadly weaponry to Ukraine, including anti-tank weapons. His administration assaulted Russian military personnel in Syria.
Most significantly, Trump endorsed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, the harshest penalties enacted against Russia. These were not the actions of someone pursuing genuine diplomatic normalization. They were the actions of someone maintaining U.S. primacy while dangling the possibility of partnership to extract geopolitical concessions.
Trump’s second term made the strategy explicit. Marco Rubio has called China “the single greatest challenge this nation has ever faced” and argued the Ukraine war should end because it benefits China. The East Asian behemoth is not the only target of DC. The Soufan Center noted in March 2025 that if relations improve, “Trump officials will look to their Russian counterparts for help in re-imposing strict limitations on Iran’s nuclear program.” Bloomberg reported in March 2025 that Russia agreed to assist Washington in communicating with Iran on various issues, including its nuclear program and support for regional proxy groups. Trump had relayed that interest directly to Putin during a February phone call, and top administration officials followed up at talks in Riyadh days later.
The logic is straightforward. By pulling Russia away from its partnership with Iran, the United States isolates Tehran and strips it of a critical great power patron. Kellogg had emphasized at the Munich Security Conference that Russia’s alliances with China, Iran, and North Korea “didn’t exist four years ago” and that severing them was a top American priority.
But the June 2025 American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites complicated this fantasy significantly. Russia publicly condemned the strikes. The CRANK alignment of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea has arguably deepened rather than fractured.
Geopolitical skullduggery aside, it’s time to get real about the United States’ geopolitical machinations with respect to Russia. The Reverse Nixon premise rests on conditions that do not exist in the current year. Nixon’s 1972 opening to China succeeded because the Sino-Soviet split was already profound. Following Joseph Stalin’s death, Khrushchev initiated de-Stalinization and moved toward peaceful coexistence, which Mao perceived as “revisionism.” The USSR cut aid to China in 1960 and supported India during the Sino-Indian War of 1962. Border clashes in 1969 further intensified their rivalry. Minister of National Defense Lin Biao insisted China maintain hawkish relations toward both superpowers. His death in 1971 cleared the way for rapprochement. Nixon walked through a door already opening.
Today’s Russia-China partnership operates under fundamentally different conditions than the Sino-Soviet split Nixon exploited in 1972. In February 2022, just twenty days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping declared a “no limits” partnership—a joint statement proclaiming “friendship between the two states has no limits” and “no forbidden areas of cooperation.” Both countries share deep grievances against American hegemony and have been pushing together for a multipolar world order to replace the U.S.-led system. There is no ideological split comparable to the Sino-Soviet rupture to exploit.
The United States’ record of being “agreement incapable” on NATO expansion and the Iran nuclear deal reinforces perceptions that Washington cannot be trusted. The bungled Middle East ventures and 2007-2008 financial crisis discredited the American led liberal order. Russia and China understand they are stronger together. They have watched American strategists attempt to play them against each other for years. They are not taking the bait.
Dialing down tensions with Russia is fine, but it should be done without ulterior motives. Reducing the risk of nuclear confrontation, restoring diplomatic channels, and ending proxy wars are worthwhile goals on their own merits, not as tactical maneuvers in some grand game of strategic manipulation.
In an ideal world, the United States would stop its belligerent actions toward Russia, withdraw from NATO, let Europe defend itself, and not treat nations like geopolitical playthings. Genuine non-interventionism means treating all nations equally, not selectively courting some to use as weapons against others.
Until that happens, Trump’s Russia gambit will remain what it has always been. Not a strategy for peace, but another chapter in America’s endless quest for global dominance through division and manipulation.
