Half a century ago, Richard Nixon sought to split China from Russia. Fifty years later, President Trump is doing the reverse. He is trying to split Russia from China.

Then and now, each man's strategy makes sense for its time.

In 1969, the split between the former Soviet Union and China broke out in an open border-conflict. The split between the communist behemoths had been widening for some time.

The Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia to quell an uprising there was seen by Beijing as having ominous implications for communist regimes not toeing the Kremlin’s line — as China wasn’t. Mao’s China had been seeking increasing ideological independence from Moscow for some time. Now, it was deemed a necessity.

Thank you for signing up!

Subscribe to more newsletters here

Of course, China was the junior partner at that time. The Soviet Union was the second pole in a bipolar world divided between capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorship.

Today, China and Russia’s roles are reversed — Russia is the junior partner. Its footprint has shrunk and many of its former client states are now firmly in the West’s orbit. The threat of Ukraine becoming yet another helped fuel Putin’s........

© The Hill