The Reverse Nixon/Kissinger… Finally

For nearly 13 years, well before the Maidan/Crimea crisis and even Trump’s initial run for President, this author has argued for a “Reverse Nixon” or “Reverse Kissinger” tilt to Russia to balance China.

In light of the recent dust-up with Ukrainian President Zelensky in the White House, it appears that President Trump is seeking a variation of this policy. While difficult for many Western elites and card-carrying members of the DC Blob to accept, this policy is essential for many reasons, and analysts, including well-known strategists like Edward Luttwak, recognize it.

To be crystal clear, a successful “Reverse Nixon” or “Reverse Kissinger” does not mean that Russia and Vladimir Putin will dump Xi Jinping and China tomorrow and embrace Trump and the U.S..

If anyone thinks that they are delusional.

However, Russia can be a pivot player seeking more influence and making China spend more than they do now to keep Russia more on its side.

That, in and of itself, is a strategic benefit to the U.S. and more than Europe can realistically offer the U.S. in ensuring that Halford Mackinder’s prophecy about the World-Island does not come true.

A neo-Nixonian turn in American grand strategy that embraces realism, if not realpolitik, has been needed for a long time. Had it been adopted years ago, the costs likely to be paid today would likely have been less. Tragically, that was not done, and a butcher’s bill is now being paid in the bloodlands of Ukraine.

America faces a strategic situation and needs to face it with steely eyes, determination, and realism:

• China is more significant than any the U.S. has ever faced previously;
• Asia, not Europe, is now the geopolitical center of the world;
• Russia is more Europe’s problem than America’s;
• The Europeans have failed to spend sufficiently on defense for their own backyard, and as long as America continues to ride in like a knight in shining armor, they never will;
• Vice President JD Vance is right. There is a gap in values emerging between America and Europe;
• Russia has a lot of nuclear weapons, which makes a complete defeat of Russia similar to what happened to Nazi Germany impossible. Any effort to accomplish this risks nuclear escalation and the potential, even if remote, of the end of the world as we know it;
• The more America simultaneously confronts Russia and China, the tighter their strategic embrace, which creates a significant problem for the U.S. in Asia;
• The U.S. faces historic debt that will only grow at an increasing rate. The U.S. now spends more on interest than on defense. This will create increasing fiscal constraints as we move forward;
• To balance China with a larger navy now than the U.S. has, America needs a better military and, especially, a revamped naval industrial base. But that will be increasingly difficult due to the debt already mentioned;
• Taiwan matters more to U.S. interests than Ukraine. It makes too much of the world’s high-end semiconductors, and should China conquer Taiwan, they will also have much greater naval access to the U.S. backyard. This hasn’t happened since we defeated Imperial Japan in WWII;

We must focus on China, drive wedges between Russia and China, and hope Europe succeeds. But we can no longer afford to be their perennial backstop if they don’t.

For those worried about breaking the Western alliance, serious questions must be raised. 

Europe has confronted the most significant war in Europe since World War II, and only now is Western Europe even beginning to step up sufficiently for its defense in its backyard. While the U.S. should certainly hope for success in this endeavor, U.S. interests are compelling a full pivot to Asia and balancing China. And with this in mind, what exactly will Europe do to help China if a conflict over Taiwan breaks out?

President Trump is an unusually blunt teller of truth within this geopolitical context, but the truth is what he speaks. We are entering a world of grimy gray geopolitics and spheres of influence where balancing power is what matters, not legalisms or paeans to moral virtue. This is a world that would be well recognized by our last fully realist president, Richard Nixon, and his National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. They knew there were no absolute victories, only the ever-vigilant tending to the balance of power.

In this world order, driving a wedge between a Eurasian axis, Russia and China, is critical even if the means by which it is achieved are unpleasant. An increasingly constrained U.S. otherwise risks whistling past the graveyard of past great powers.