Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revealed the Trump administration’s strategy to loosen Russia’s ties with China, echoing former President Richard Nixon’s Cold War approach of pulling China away from the Soviet Union.
The Challenge of Breaking the Russia-China Bond
Speaking to Breitbart News, Rubio acknowledged the difficulty of fully detaching Russia from China but stressed the importance of preventing Moscow from becoming overly dependent on Beijing.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be successful completely at peeling them [Russia] off from China,” Rubio said when asked if Trump’s diplomatic efforts in Ukraine resembled Nixon’s Cold War strategy.
“I also don’t think having China and Russia at each other’s necks is good for global stability because they’re both nuclear powers. But I do think we’re in a situation now where the Russians have become increasingly dependent on the Chinese, and that’s not a good outcome either,” he added.
Rubio argued that U.S.-China relations will define the 21st century and that Russia aligning too closely with China would threaten both American and Russian interests.
“If Russia becomes a permanent junior partner to China in the long term, now you’re talking about two nuclear powers aligned against the United States,” he warned.
He also cautioned that isolating Russia too much could push Moscow deeper into Beijing’s orbit, making it nearly impossible for Russia to improve relations with the U.S. in the future.
“Even ten years from now or five years from now, if this trend continues, we could find ourselves in a situation where whether Russia wants to improve its relations with the U.S. or not, they can’t because they’ve become completely dependent on the Chinese because we have cut them off. I don’t know if that’s a good outcome for us.”
Strategic Competition Without Complete Isolation
Rubio emphasized that while the U.S. must remain in strategic competition with both Russia and China, it should still maintain diplomatic ties with both countries.
“We’re going to have disagreements with the Russians, but we have to have a relationship with both,” he said. “These are big, powerful countries with nuclear stockpiles. They can project power globally. I think we have lost the concept of maturity and sanity in diplomatic relations.”
Targeting China’s Influence in Latin America
Rubio’s first foreign trip as Secretary of State took him to Panama, where he persuaded the government to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative. He described the initiative as a tool of economic coercion and warned that Panama’s involvement posed a risk to U.S. commerce, particularly concerning the Panama Canal.
Rubio also discussed his recent meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, linking it to broader U.S. energy interests.
“At that meeting, you had the three largest oil producers in the world—the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia—meeting, and we talked about energy and how important energy is to the future,” he explained.
He framed the Trump administration’s foreign policy as one of strength, rewarding U.S. allies while making it costly to oppose America.
On February 26, U.S. and Russian officials also held discussions on potential economic cooperation in the Arctic, focusing on resource exploration and new trade routes.
