As US President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office on February 28 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for an explosive meeting that would reveal deep fissures between Washington and Kyiv, he was also asked by a reporter about another world leader: Vladimir Putin.
In the very setting in which he joined forces with Vice President JD Vance to berate Zelenskyy for not being grateful to the US for its military and financial aid, and for not backing his attempts at diplomacy with Moscow, Trump had more sympathetic words for the Russian president.
“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said, referring to the persistent allegations from opposition Democrats that Russia helped him come to power, which overshadowed his first term.
Two weeks later, as Ukraine has accepted – under Trump pressure – a ceasefire with Russia without offering Kyiv the security guarantees it seeks, the question of what’s driving the United States president to go relatively soft on Putin is once again grabbing headlines.
One theory has gained some ground in recent days. Trump, some strategists argue, is attempting a subtle geopolitical manoeuvre: By pulling Russia closer to the US, he is trying to wean it away from China, Washington’s biggest long-term rival and Moscow’s biggest benefactor.
They’re calling it the “reverse Nixon”, after US President Richard Nixon’s historic rapprochement with China in the 1970s. The move normalised US-China relations after nearly 25 years and deepened a wedge between the Soviet Union and China in a defining moment for the Cold War.
So are Trump’s moves part of a diplomatic calculus to weaken the bond between Russia and China that has dramatically strengthened in recent years? And can the US succeed in that endeavour?
The short answer: That’s unlikely. Experts point out that the US president has also sent feelers to China in a bid to improve ties – undercutting suggestions that he’s trying to pull Moscow away from Beijing. And nothing that the US does, they say, will make Putin risk relations with China. Instead, Trump’s moves could end up helping Beijing.
A ‘broader rehabilitation’ of ties with Russia
While Trump ran for president on the promise that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war, his recent outreach to Putin since taking office has gone “far beyond” peace talks, according to William Jackson and Mark Williams, economists at Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomics consultancy based in the United Kingdom. By some accounts, the president appears set on a “broader rehabilitation of US-Russia relations”, they wrote in a late February note.
They cite Trump’s frequent use of Russian talking points on the war in Ukraine – the US president has alleged that Kyiv was responsible for starting the war – and his suggestion that Russia should return to the Group of Seven (G7), a select group of highly industrialised democracies, among other examples. Russia was a member of the grouping – then named the G8 – until its 2014 invasion of Crimea, when it was booted out by other members.
Trump has publicly discussed the “potentially historic economic partnerships” and “incredible opportunities” for US companies in Russia should its war with Ukraine end. Russia has been economically isolated for the past three years due to international sanctions, and the end of the war could change that.
Since Trump’s very public dismissal of Zelenskyy during their White House meeting two weeks ago, the US president has also spoken about how he finds it easier to deal with Russia than Ukraine at times, especially when it comes to peace negotiations.
But behind Trump’s approach to Russia lies a larger game plan, some members of his administration, and some experts, have suggested.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, said that the US wanted to “break” the alliance between Russia, China and North Korea. In an interview with the right-wing website Breitbart, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke of how Russia’s dependency on China – which has grown during the war with Ukraine – was not a “good outcome” for Washington.
In a March article, historian and strategist Richard Luttwak argued that the White House bust-up with Zelenskyy and the push to get Ukraine to compromise in a bid to end the Russia war “was all done in the service of Trump’s larger and longer term ambition of neutralising China”. Luttwak, who did not respond to a request for comment from Al Jazeera for this article, described Trump’s policy as a “reverse Nixon”.
Other facts, however, raise questions about the idea of a grand strategy underpinning Trump’s efforts to woo Putin, say several analysts.
Is this a ‘reverse Nixon’?
For Michael Clarke, a historian and strategic expert at Australia’s Deakin University who specialises in China’s foreign policy, “there is a real ahistoricism with the ‘reverse Nixon’ argument”.
“The current situation bears almost no resemblance to the situation confronted by Nixon and Kissinger in 1969-70,” Clarke told Al Jazeera, referring to Henry Kissinger, a former US national security adviser and secretary of state.
A key difference, he said, is that by the time Nixon met with Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1971, relations between the USSR and China were in steep decline. The two sides were engaged in protracted ideological conflict over the future of the global Communist movement and they had recently engaged in a military confrontation over their joint border in 1969.
By contrast, Russia and China are today closer than they have ever been – bound by strong economic, military and strategic cooperation, and a shared loathing of the West.
Jaehan Park, an assistant professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said that Nixon also had a very different reputation at home that allowed him to upend US foreign policy. Unlike Trump, who critics alleged was a beneficiary of Russian election interference in 2016, Nixon was never accused of personally gaining from a detente with Beijing.
“Nixon was able to do what he did because he was characterised as a staunch anti-Communist, but Mr Trump’s relationship with Russia in general, and Mr Putin in particular, has been under scrutiny in the American media and public discourses for a long time,” Park told Al Jazeera.
Given Putin’s status as a “persona non grata in the West”, Park said that even Republican senators might “not be entirely warm to the idea of cutting deals with Russia”.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approach to China isn’t very clear, either.
Trump has imposed 20 percent tariffs on Chinese imports – though these are lower than some tariffs on Canada and Mexico – and spoken of an artificial intelligence race with Beijing. But he has also “boasted of his ‘great’ relationship with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and talked up the possibility of a new trade deal with Beijing”, Clarke said.
The US president has spoken of wanting stronger collaboration with China, and has pushed for coordinated reductions in the nuclear stockpiles of Moscow, Beijing and Washington, said Ali Wyne, a senior researcher on US-China relations at the International Crisis Group.
All of this suggests that Trump “seems instead to envision a ‘G3’ that sets the terms of geopolitics”, Wyne told Al Jazeera.
And what about Putin?
From ‘respect’ to ‘murderous dictator’
Trump isn’t the first US president to court Putin.
In November 2001, then-US President George W Bush hosted the Russian leader at his private ranch in the tiny town of Crawford, Texas. Putin and his then-wife Lyudmila stayed the night at the ranch. Bush spoke publicly about how Putin was the first world leader who called him after the 9/11 attacks. The Russian leader also backed the US invasion of Afghanistan.
“I am convinced that he and I can build a relationship of mutual respect and candour. And I’m convinced that it’s important for the world that we do so,” Bush told reporters.
Dressed in frayed jeans, Bush drove Putin in a white Ford pickup truck to a waterfall on the ranch, starting a practice the two would routinely engage in over the years: When Bush visited Russia in 2005, they drove together in the Russian leader’s vintage 1956 Volga car. A year later, when the US president returned to Russia for a G8 summit, they drove an electric car together.
But relations quickly began to lurch from crisis to crisis, over issues ranging from the US’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, to NATO’s expansion into Europe.
The US and Russia experienced a brief reset under US President Barack Obama, but relations collapsed again following Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and Putin’s support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
While Trump had positive things to say about Putin during his first term in office, the US-Russia relationship did not improve very much. In fact, Trump imposed fresh sanctions on Russia – as well as on Iran and North Korea – under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).
But it was the war in Ukraine that ended any prospects of a thaw. Under President Joe Biden, the US armed and financed Ukraine through the conflict. Since the war began in 2022, the US and its allies have imposed at least 21,692 sanctions on Russia in a bid to cripple its economy and force it into stopping its military campaign. Biden described Putin as a “murderous dictator” and a “pure thug”.
And as the US pushes for a peace deal in Ukraine, Trump, too, has suggested that he might impose additional sanctions on Russia if it does not play ball.
Over a quarter of a century, Putin has developed a “longstanding and visceral disdain and distrust of the United States”, said Clarke.
Trump can’t change that, experts say.
“There is little, if any, reason to conclude that President Putin sees the second Trump administration’s foreign policy as the new US normal,” said Wyne. “He likely discerns a brief window of opportunity to secure tactical concessions from a transactional counterpart, not to effect a fundamental recalibration of US-Russia relations.”
Contrast that with Russia’s relations with China, say experts, and it becomes even clearer why Putin cannot afford to jeopardise ties with Beijing.
‘No-limits partnership’
In February 2022, Putin visited Beijing for the Winter Olympics, and then committed to a “no-limits partnership” with Xi, his host.
Days later, the Russian leader would launch his full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, testing those promised limits as country after country came under pressure to condemn Moscow and join a growing band of nations willing to penalise the Kremlin.
China resisted that pressure, refusing to condemn Russia while claiming neutrality in the war. By the time the conflict started, Putin and Xi were already close partners: They have met more than 40 times since Xi came to power in 2012, first as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and then as president.
But the Ukraine conflict has deepened Russia’s dependence on China, which has emerged as a vital lifeline for its northern neighbour at a time when Moscow has faced backbreaking sanctions.
More than 1,000 foreign companies left or wound down operations after the invasion, according to the Yale School of Management, and Chinese companies have filled the vacuum.
China, in turn, received sharply discounted oil and natural gas from Russia, which became a major new destination for its manufactured goods. Chinese exports to Russia rose by 70 percent between 2021 and 2024, according to Capital Economics, with Russia absorbing a significant portion of China’s export boom after the COVID-19 pandemic. China is also a source of dual-use technology such as drones, and offers diplomatic support to Russia’s interests in weakening US power, said Clarke.
Bilateral trade between Russia and China has soared from $140bn in 2021 to $244bn in 2024.
But for Russia and China, experts say, there’s something even more fundamental about the relationship than dollars earned and companies launched.
“The impetus for China-Russia relations is structural: each country regards the United States as its principal adversary and sees the other as an important partner in its efforts to avoid military, economic and diplomatic encirclement,” said Wyne.
Clarke agreed.
“Russia and China are in strong alignment and have clear incentives to continue that alignment and the Trump administration by all appearances has no clear idea about how or why pivoting to Putin assists either American interests – arguably it very much does not – or contributes to stabilisation of international politics,” he said.
To be sure, Trump’s concessions on Ukraine will matter to Putin, he said. But they “don’t trump what he [Putin] gains from continued alignment with Beijing”, Clarke said.
It would, he said, be “strategically inept to burn the long-term relationship with Beijing to secure a relationship with the Trump administration, which could of course be out of office by 2028”.
And as far as China is concerned, it won’t be worried about a “reverse Nixon”, say analysts. In fact, it might be in a position to reverse Western alliances thanks to Trump.
‘Beneficial to Beijing’
China will be closely watching Trump’s attempts at a rapprochement with Putin, said Clarke. It will be disappointed that it doesn’t have a more prominent diplomatic role in the efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war, he added.
But on the whole, Trump’s posture on the war “could be seen as beneficial to Beijing” for two reasons, Clarke said.
First, the US’s weakened conviction towards Ukraine’s defence will be seen by China as evidence that if Beijing persists long enough, it can “outlast the US” – including on the question of how the West might respond to a potential forcible takeover of Taiwan.
“One lesson that Beijing could potentially draw here is that the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that the US and the West are not prepared to commit their own militaries to the defence of ‘friends’ such as Ukraine, nor is the imposition of Western-led sanctions in response something that cannot be overcome,” Clarke said.
Second, Trump’s transactional approach towards traditional allies, “in which US commitment to defend allies is conditional on what allies provide the US”, likely weakens Washington’s commitment to its Asian partners who often count upon the US as a counter to China.
But there’s a third potential benefit for China, too. Trump’s mounting trade war with Europe and his reluctance to commit to alliances on the continent might push nations there to explore stronger ties with Beijing, as China presents itself as the upholder of globalisation.
“While his ‘America First’ foreign policy is unlikely to change the underlying dynamics of US-China and US-Russia relations, it is already doing severe damage to longstanding US alliances and partnerships, especially in Europe,” Wyne said.