Henry Kissinger Pushed Trump to Work With Russia to Box In China

The former secretary of state pushed one president to use China to isolate the Soviet Union. These days, he’s counseling almost the reverse—and officials are listening.
By ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, ANDREW DESIDERIO, SAM STEIN and BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN

Henry Kissinger suggested to President Donald Trump that the United States should work with Russia to contain a rising China.
The former secretary of state—who famously engineered the tactic of establishing diplomatic relations with China in order to isolate the Soviet Union—pitched almost the inverse of that idea to Trump during a series of private meetings during the presidential transition, five people familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. 

The potential strategy would use closer relations with Russia, along with other countries in the region, to box in China’s growing power and influence.
Kissinger also pitched the idea to Jared Kushner, the top White House adviser whose portfolio includes foreign-policy matters, one of the sources briefed on the discussions said.
Inside the administration, the proposal has found receptive ears, with some of Trump’s top advisers—in addition to officials in the State Department, Pentagon, and the National Security Council—also floating a strategy of using closer relations with Moscow to contain Beijing, according to White House and Capitol Hill insiders. 

But the idea has been complicated by the president’s deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has caused countless domestic political headaches.
Both the White House and the National Security Council declined to comment. 

Kissinger's office did not return a request for comment.
The mere fact that Kissinger was given an audience to make his pitch—he’s met with President Trump at least three times since the 2016 campaign—is a testament to his tremendous staying power in top political circles, despite a controversial foreign policy track record that includes numerous accusations of war crimes. 

It also is a reflection of how dramatically geopolitical relations have changed during the course of his lifetime.

Kissinger isn’t viewed as a China hawk. 

It is well known in certain circles that he has a direct line to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. 

And the discussions he had with President Trump appear, at least superficially, to run counter to his public pronouncements since 2017 that China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative—Xi’s vision for a China-centric world based on infrastructure and trade deals, and the object of growing Western alarm—would have a positive effect on Asia.
Kissinger is no Russophobe, either. 

He has met with Putin 17 times over the years. 

And Kissinger has repeatedly advocated for a better working relationship between Washington and Moscow. 

Of last week’s summit in Helsinki between President Trump and Putin, Kissinger said, “It was a meeting that had to take place. I have advocated it for several years.” 

He has also expressed doubt about the purpose of Russian interference in the election, and promoted a better balance of power among the world’s largest influencers.
His overall views seem to have made their way into explanations for President Trump’s affinity for Putin. 

One former Trump administration official referred to President Trump’s posture toward Putin during the Helsinki summit earlier this month as “the reverse of the Nixon-China play.”
“Russia and China are cozying up to each other and it’s a lethal combination if they’re together,” said the former official, who was familiar with the strategizing behind the summit.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, various figures in the Trump orbit—not just Kissinger—discussed a strategy of shoring up relations not only with Russia, but also with Japan, the Philippines, India, Middle Eastern countries, and others as a wide-ranging international counterweight to what was pitched as the dominant Chinese threat.
Since becoming president, Trump, those sources said, has shown varying signs of interest. 

But his actual posture toward China has remained difficult to define. 

The president has flattered the country’s political leadership, partnered with it on key foreign policy matters, and adopted a highly confrontational positions on trade. 

Anything resembling a large, cohesive “counterweight” policy has yet to gain serious traction. 

And one of the main economic levers that would be used to achieve this type of outcome—the trade deal known as the Trans Pacific Partnership—was abandoned by Trump even as Kissinger himself nominally supported it.
Internally, the fights over a China policy have been lengthy. 

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, has long railed against a rising threat from China, and he was present during the meeting between Trump and Kissinger that took place during the transition. 

Other Trump allies who share Bannon’s pragmatic disposition include trade adviser Peter Navarro, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
Unlike Kissinger—who stressed that relations with Russia were not an end goal itself but part of a decades long approach to revamping continental power structures—these advisers argued that the threat from China needed to be confronted in the near term. 

A congressional source familiar with the strategy said Bannon often focused on “civilizational threats that face the U.S. emanating from Arab world and China.” 

Indeed, Bannon has backed populist, nationalist parties throughout Europe based in large part on appealing to identity politics and international threats. 

Those same parties have often embraced and praised Putin.
Among Capitol Hill foreign policy circles, the source added, the view is that Kissinger’s motivations for pursuing the reverse of his own policy from the 1970s are “more intellectually honest and honorable” than Bannon’s. 

Though a separate source familiar with the transition talks said the two individuals had a fair amount of overlap in terms of their world views.
“[Kissinger] did not advocate a partnership with Russia,” said the source. 

“But he was absolutely adamant that 17 years of the global war on terror had taken up too much time and focus. And he is a huge believer that this is a great power struggle [with China].”
The issue for lawmakers, as is often the case with Trump, has been trying to discern whether his attempts to cozy up to Russia are driven by broader concerns about Beijing’s growing influence, or by an affinity for Putin himself.
That certainly has been the case in the wake of the Helsinki summit, during which Trump sided with Putin’s denials of Russian election meddling over the assessment of his own intelligence agencies.
The episode prompted sharp criticism from lawmakers, including some who said that any talk of strategically working with Putin to combat China is merely a face-saving measure to explain away the president’s conduct. 

But according to Capitol Hill sources, it also left several lawmakers wondering whether the administration was attempting to make a larger move on China.
“I’m hesitant to characterize what is being legitimately discussed because this administration is such an incoherent dumpster fire it’s impossible to ascertain what’s legitimate discussion, what’s not legitimate, what’s being discussed in one part but may have no traction elsewhere,” a source on Capitol Hill said.
Trump advisers have considered the Kissinger-type approach to east Asia since the 2016 campaign. But a source close to the White House noted that the “key word is ‘considering’ as they know that any move to implement it would, at least currently, be met with a massive backlash, and rightly so.”
The source added that several senior White House officials believe that “Russia would be a ‘useful counterweight’ to China.” 

But not everyone buys into that theory.
It’s not just that Russia has played a largely counter-productive role vis-a-vis the United States, and much of the rest of the liberal world order, over the last few years. 

It’s that their points of leverage over China are limited largely to weapons, oil, and cyber intrusions.
“I understand the idea of a collective approach to boxing China in and trying to integrate it into an order consistent with our interests,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

“I just don’t see Russia as currently oriented playing a role in that.”
Still, U.S. officials have become increasingly vocal in their warnings of the threat that China poses and the need for a comprehensive strategy to combat it. 

At the Aspen Security Forum last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray called China “the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country,” and Michael Collins, deputy assistant director of the CIA’s East Asia mission, said that China is waging a “cold war” against the United States.
“It is clear the Trump administration views the rise of China—from issues of trade, its continued quest to dominate Asia and displace U.S. power to building a military that can challenge Washington’s most advanced weaponry—as its number one national security challenge,” said Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest. 

“I am not shocked that they would consider Russia a potential partner in containing China’s rise.”
In theory, the partner-with-Russia-to-combat-China strategy—regardless of its motivations—is not entirely without merit, experts say, if only to break up the partnership developing between Putin and Xi themselves.
“China and Russia have a very similar worldview right now and they're supporting each other pretty strongly. I don’t see a lot of cracks,” said Lyle Goldstein, a Russia and China expert at the U.S. Naval War College.
Russia and China often pursue complementary agendas and support each other at the United Nations Security Council, said Abigail Grace, who until recently worked on the Asia portfolio at the National Security Council. 

“I don’t think that the level of China-Russia collaboration is necessarily within U.S. interests,” Grace said.
But while Moscow and Beijing have cordial relations and share many strategic objectives, there are areas of relative distrust between them, including over Central Asia. 

China has made major economic and diplomatic inroads in the region with its Belt and Road Initiative, which includes Central Asian nations a key part of its strategy. 

But Russia views that region as within its traditional sphere of influence. 

While it hasn’t stood in the way of Xi’s overtures to countries like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it has declined to join the initiative despite China’s invitation.
Beyond Central Asia, it’s also clear that with its enormous economy and rapidly expanding military ambitions, China is on a trajectory to greatly surpass Russia’s global heft—a trajectory that could compel Russia to seek partnerships (informal or otherwise) elsewhere.
“Looking out over long term, there is a belief in the administration that Moscow will see Beijing as its greatest geopolitical foe—just like Washington does now—and that could set up a rapprochement with America,” said a source close to the White House. 

“But it is very far out into the future.”
But there’s a very good reason the “reverse Nixon” strategy hasn’t been implemented yet. 

It’s just not geopolitically realistic.
“China is the greater long term strategic challenge,” said John Rood, the Under secretary of Defense for Policy, at the Aspen Security Forum. 

“But in many ways, Russia is the larger near term threat because of the overwhelming lethality of its nuclear arsenal and also because of some the behavior that the Russian government has exhibited.”
Russia is at times a flamboyant foe of the European Union and the United States, seeking to sow disruption and division within and among Western allies. 

It also has been highly disruptive of U.S. politics making it an illogical partner for an ambitious attempt to help preserve the current international system.
“At the moment, with Russia having tried to attack our democratic institutions as well as still acting like a rogue state in Ukraine and Syria, the chances of a U.S.-Russia alliance to take on China are slim to none,” said Kazianis.
“But know this: time and circumstance can change minds and win hearts. I would not be shocked if in seven to 10 years this does indeed take place.”

BANNON LAYS GROUNDWORK FOR ECONOMIC WAR IN CHINA

The promise Bannon made as a White House adviser may soon become a reality.

BY TINA NGUYEN

“We’re at economic war with China,” Steve Bannon told The American Prospect just days before he left the White House. 

The interview, which presaged his return to Breitbart, appeared to suggest the broad contours of Bannon’s thesis regarding the complex power struggle currently taking place in East Asia. 

China, which shares a 900-mile border with North Korea, accounts for 90 percent of the country’s trade. 

The United States and South Korea, meanwhile, have been close allies since the Korean War. 

The cold war being waged across the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula remains, in may ways, a proxy between the U.S. and the People’s Republic, which have long been engaged in skirmishes over I.P. theft, price undercutting, and job exportation. 

“One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path,” Bannon opined to Robert Kuttner, who days before had compared his boss, Donald Trump, to the “arrogant fool” Kim Jong Un. 

“On Korea, they’re just tapping us along. It’s just a sideshow.”
Donald Trump entered the White House prepared to hold China accountable for what he saw as currency manipulation, among other economic maneuvers. 

But Trump hasn’t quite stood by his harsh rhetoric. 

But Bannon, who is now comfortably outside the confines of the West Wing, appears prepared to turn his anti-China war into reality, enlisting allies from Henry Kissinger to Hong Kong investment banks in his fight against Chinese trade practices. 

In an interview with Bloomberg’s Joshua Green, author of the recent magnum opus Devil’s Bargain, Bannon agreed with the common perception that China’s systematic intellectual-property theft was crippling the U.S. economy. 

“There have been 4,000 years of Chinese diplomatic history, all centered on ‘barbarian management,’ minus the last 150 years,” he told Green. 

“It’s always about making the barbarians a tributary state... Our tribute to China is our technology—that’s what it takes to enter their market, and [they’ve taken] $3.5 trillion worth over the last 10 years. We have to give them the basic essence of American capitalism: our innovation.”
It’s one thing for Bannon to talk up a trade war with China, but it’s another for him to be actively agitating for one. 

Earlier this month, Bannon spoke at a conference in Hong Kong, sponsored by a Chinese bank, in which he called the former British colony “the heart of the economic-nationalist movement [that] is standing up to China.” 

He also took several meetings with Cold War-era figures, including Kissinger, the Nixon-era secretary of state who opened the door to trade with China and has been enjoying lucrative consulting fees pretty much ever since, in which the two discussed the Committee on the Present Danger, a foreign-policy interest group. 

“They understood that you couldn’t do it from inside,” Bannon says. 

“You had to go outside and, like a fire bell in the night, wake up the American people.”
For now, Bannon does not have an ally in the White House, which is currently full of figures like Gary Cohn, Steve Mnuchin, Dina Powell, and other “globalists,” who present as unlikely stewards of Trump’s campaign promises. 

He also doesn’t have much of an ally in the American electorate. 

Bannon hopes that he and his allies can pressure Trump from the outside to keep to his China promises—a similar tactic he’s used in his other political activities, such as backing the populist Roy Moore against the Trump-endorsed Luther Strange in the recent Alabama Senate race. 

Now that Bannon has made his influence known, he told Green that he was ready to keep flexing his newfound political muscle, with the goal of getting populist, hard-line, anti-China candidates into Congress. 

“Every day we are going to be making China a huge part of the ’18 and ’20 elections,” he promised.

Enemy of my enemy: Trump's comments on Russia are intended for Chinese ears

By John Moody 

President Donald Trump listens to a reporters question at Trump Tower in New York, Monday, Jan. 9, 2017.

Of the many unconventional moves and remarks President Donald Trump already has made before taking office, one that rattles both Republicans and Democrats is his admiration for Vladimir Putin and his seeming determination to improve U.S.-Russian ties.
But what if this most unusual leader is following his businessman’s instincts, and taking a page from the diplomatic playbook of two brilliant world power players: Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
While no one – even Trump – thinks Putin is our BFF, the new president has been, even before he announced his candidacy, critical of China’s double standard when it comes to trade with the U.S. and manipulation of its own currency. 

Trump’s remarks about wanting to strengthen cooperation with Putin to jointly combat Islamic terrorism make a kind of rough-hewn sense. 

And holding out the bait of weakening economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed by the current Obama Administration are exactly the signals of respect that Putin desperately wants.
While the echo chamber of most cable news channels and newspaper editorial pages has reacted with shock and horror, Trump’s denunciation of China versus his pragmatic stance on Russia recalls the historic and visionary Triangular Diplomacy employed by Nixon and Kissinger to rebalance relations among China, the Soviet Union and the U.S.
Early in Nixon’s first term, he and Kissinger, his then-national security adviser, decided to capitalize (no pun intended) on the fissure between the world’s two biggest communist powers. 

China, for its part, had concluded by 1969 that it could not prevail against the Soviet Union militarily and sent various signals that it was interested in warming the diplomatic thaw between Beijing and Washington.
Seeing the potential benefits for the U.S., and to back the Soviets into a corner, Nixon loosened trade restrictions, and began negotiating quietly about restoring diplomatic ties. 

In 1971, China allowed the U.S. to send a table tennis team to compete in China, the photo-op famously known as “ping pong diplomacy.” 

Kissinger made a secret trip to China to meet with its top leaders, to announce it would support China’s membership in the United Nations. 

A year later, Nixon flew to Peking, crowning one of the 20th Century’s most significant diplomatic courtships. 

Even the mainstream American press, then as now, no friends of Republican presidents, conceded Nixon and Kissinger had executed a brilliant move that strengthened the U.S. and hobbled the Soviets, who could not hope to resume the close relations they once had with communist China.
Whether Trump is planning a similar reshuffle in relations with China and Russia is unclear. 

But his harsh rhetoric about China’s trade policies and expansion of its influence in Southern Asia, versus his kinder, gentler approach to Russia has China on its guard. 

The state-run China Daily newspaper last week warned the incoming administration not to push Beijing too far, or face consequences.
That is something the Chinese never had to tell Barack Obama. They didn’t and don’t fear him. 

They might not fear Trump either, but they are wary. 

And that’s a good thing.

Western civilization vs. Chinese barbarity

President Trump stresses his desire for warmer ties with Russia, while steadily bashing China

By Nicole Gaouette

A battle between Chinese despotism and the forces of Western civilization

Washington -- President Donald Trump has been playing global favorites on Twitter.
He has showered praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him "very smart!," and dismissed charges that Moscow tried to hack the election process -- even as he's bashed China for currency manipulation, skewing trade and failing to rein in North Korea.
It's unusual enough for a president to try to sway foreign policy before he's in office, let alone in 140-character bursts. 

While Trump aides have said some of his statements shouldn't be taken "literally," the tweets offer insight to his foreign policy views and raise a question: When both China and Russia are challenging US power globally, why does he favor Moscow and not Beijing?
Trump's positions on Russia and China mark a sharp turn from current policies -- and that might to the point. 

Trump and much of the Republican establishment have made clear they aim to dismantle Barack Obama's "legacy". 

Trump is also looking to use international relations in pursuit of economic ends.
Some analysts point to the possibility that Trump is taking a deeply strategic approach; others say he simply fails to understand the crucial importance of long-standing US alliances. 

At the least, it is an approach that contrasts with dovish Obama, who has tried to find areas of common interest with China and to isolate Russia for a series of international violations.

Russia has conducted a stealth invasion of Ukraine, annexed Crimea and is believed to have supplied the missile that brought down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, shot down over Ukraine in 2014.
Moscow has supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country's civil war, including in the bombing of civilians in Aleppo.

The Russian military has buzzed US aircraft and ships. 

And the US intelligence community found with "high confidence" that Russia was behind hacking during the presidential election campaign meant to sow doubts about American democracy.
And yet Trump speaks warmly of Putin and his desire for better cooperation with Russia, publicly dismissing the hacking allegations and accusing the intelligence community of acting politically.

Russian officials have said they were in contact with the Trump campaign throughout the election.

Matt Rojansky, head of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, said one reason could be Trump's belief that the US should do more work with Russia to defeat terrorism and his view of that challenge as a "civilizational battle between radical Islam and, broadly speaking, the forces of Western civilization."
Trump and his aides, particularly his national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, are much more comfortable including Russia under the Western civilization umbrella than Republicans such as Arizona Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rojansky said. 

That will cause friction, possibly sooner rather than later.

If Trump's stance on Russia might fray some of his alliances in Congress, he's already put European allies on edge with his warmth toward Putin and questions about the worth of NATO. 

He's also unnerved Asian allies by questioning the cost of helping Japan and South Korea defend themselves.

Some analysts have suggested Trump is practicing a sophisticated version of the "triangular diplomacy" former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon used to play the Soviet Union and China off against each other in the 1970s.
But the two nations are no longer bitter enemies and instead have a well-defined, if mutually wary, relationship.
China has targeted the US with cyberattacks. 

Beijing has pushed US companies in China to give up proprietary technology, it has contested US claims to freedom of navigation through Asian waters, its military has buzzed US naval vessels and Air Force jets, and it recently stole a US underwater drone.

If Trump seems to look the other way on Russian transgressions, China gets no free pass.
The President often charges that Beijing steals American jobs with unfair trade practices. 

"China has been taking out massive amounts of money and wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!" he tweeted Monday. 

Soon after winning the presidency, he antagonized Beijing by holding a phone conversation with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen.
Trump has long made China a bogeyman, accusing it in a 2012 tweet of having created the concept of global warming in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive. 

He has particularly fixated on China's economic practices, blasting it on trade and currency throughout the presidential race and blaming it for the loss of American jobs. 

Trade and job losses were central rallying cries of his campaign.

Sina Delenda Est

Trump presidency would pursue a policy of “peace through strength” in Asia
By John Pomfret

President Trump has also vowed to add more than 70 ships to the U.S. naval fleet, turning it into a force of 350 surface ships and submarines. To ride herd over this massive buildup, Trump has reportedly tapped Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) to be the next secretary of the Navy. Forbes has long supported a bigger Navy and stronger pushback against China in the South China Sea.

I participated on Wednesday in a Chinese talk show on Chinese-owned Phoenix TV on the election of Donald Trump. 

There the glee was palpable about the victory of a man that Chinese state-run media has dubbed a “clown” and held up as an example of why the Chinese are better off living in a one-party state.
Underlying the glee was a belief of the guests, most of them leading Chinese analysts or former diplomats, that a Trump administration would cede the Western Pacific to China, downgrade its alliances with Japan and South Korea and not carry through on the candidate’s threats to slap tariffs on Chinese goods. 

Perhaps, I thought, my fellow panelists should be careful what they wished for.
To be sure, many in the Chinese government did not like Hillary Clinton. 

She made headlines in 1995 at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, criticizing China’s family-planning policies. 

As secretary of state, she, more than President Obama, was the originator of “the pivot,” the United States’ move to refocus its power on Asia.
On the campaign trail, Trump criticized Clinton’s Asia policy and mused about pulling U.S. troops out of South Korea and Japan if they didn’t pay more for American defense. 

He floated the idea that perhaps the two longtime U.S. allies could even become nuclear powers. Chinese analysts were giddy at the prospect of a U.S. retreat from Asia.
But, increasingly, Trump’s musings on Asia appear to be more of a ploy to wrest more dollars from U.S. allies than a genuine threat to exit the region. 

On Wednesday, Trump assured South Korean President Park Geun-hye that the United States would defend South Korea from any North Korean aggression. 

Trump also agreed to meet with Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in New York next week.
Trump has also vowed to add more than 70 ships to the U.S. naval fleet, turning it into a force of 350 surface ships and submarines. 

To ride herd over this massive buildup, Trump has reportedly tapped Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) to be the next secretary of the Navy. 

Forbes has long supported a bigger Navy and stronger pushback against China in the South China Sea.
Other signs point to a more assertive U.S. policy in Asia. 

Professor Peter Navarro described the Obama administration’s “pivot” as “talking loudly but carrying a small stick” and vowed a more forceful response to China’s maneuvers in the East and South China seas.

This week, two of Trump’s campaign advisers — professor Peter Navarro, known for his strong criticism of China, and Alexander Gray, who served as an adviser to Forbes — published an essay in Foreign Policy magazine arguing that the Obama administration had not been tough enough on China and that a Trump presidency would pursue a policy of “peace through strength” in Asia. 

Navarro and Gray described the Obama administration’s “pivot” as “talking loudly but carrying a small stick” and vowed a more forceful response to China’s maneuvers in the East and South China seas. 

Another Trump adviser is Michael Pillsbury, a former Defense Department official, who recently authored a book, “The Hundred-Year Marathon,” in which he accuses generations of U.S. leaders of being bamboozled by Beijing and outlines a Chinese plot to dominate the world.
On trade, while the guests on the show Wednesday night seemed blithe to Trump’s scheme to hit Chinese exports to the United States with tariffs or label China a currency manipulator, there is nothing to suggest that Trump won’t make good on these promises to pursue a far more protectionist path.
Already, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade deal in the Asia Pacific, is dead.
Again this is bad news for Beijing.
China’s exports to the United States have bankrolled the modernization of China’s military, science, technology and infrastructure and helped to improve the lives of countless millions.
While exports to the United States are no longer as central as they once were to China’s prosperity, with a shaky economy, Beijing needs all the business it can get.
Near the end of the show, a young man from the audience asked whether the prospect of better relations between the United States and Russia would end up hurting China.
None of the assembled seemed concerned.
But it very well could.
China shares a long border with Russia and a long, difficult history with the empire to its north. Despite a common interest in opposing U.S. power, tensions exist under the surface between Moscow and Beijing.
Listening to the talk from the panelists about Russia, I remembered reading the transcript of a conversation between President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger just a week before Nixon made his historic trip to China in February 1972.
“I think in 20 years your successor, if he’s as wise as you,” Kissinger said, “will wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese.” 
The president agreed.