WASHINGTON DC - The Trump administration should stop trying to separate Russia from China diplomatically and instead focus on strengthening Western alliances and ensuring a Ukrainian victory, policy experts warned Friday at a Hudson Institute panel.
Analysts described the deepening Moscow-Beijing relationship not as an ideological alliance but as a strategic partnership driven by opportunism and a shared “anti-Western sentiment.”
Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, warned that the US is facing an unprecedented security challenge.
“This is the first time that the US must deter two nuclear peers,” she emphasized, noting that China and Russia “separately pose the greatest threat to the US, but simultaneously, they pose an incredibly difficult problem.”
A “fool’s errand” to seek reset
The panel was unanimous in rejecting the idea that Washington could convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to pivot back toward the West.
Heinrichs called the notion that the US could potentially reset relations with the Russians to peel them off of the Chinese “a fool’s errand.” She argued that it makes “much more sense to increase solidarity with NATO.”
John Lough, Senior Associate Fellow at the NEST Centre, called the idea a “fantasy” and noted that Russia is currently receiving “so much benefit” from the relationship, adding that the “distrust in the US is far greater than it is toward China.”
The correct strategic approach, Heinrichs suggested, is to “try to make China a bad bet for the Russians, and Russia a bad bet for China.”
China as puppet master
Experts detailed how the war in Ukraine has solidified the partnership, with China acting as a crucial “force multiplier” for Moscow.
Miles Yu, senior fellow and director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, described China as a country of “opportunism” that “plays a role of either mafia gong or puppet master,” using Moscow as a proxy.
He stated that China is using the war as a “strategic distraction for the US.”
Lough was definitive on Beijing’s influence: “I don’t think Russia would be fighting the way it is today if China had not been behind it,” he added.
He pointed to the provision of “dual use technologies,” saying an estimated “2,000 bulldozers were delivered” from China to Russia, and that “led then to the construction of so-called Surovikin Line.”
Crucially, “Beijing definitely does not want to see Russia defeated in this war,” Lough said, adding “because China most certainly doesn’t want to have a failing state on its borders” or “another North Korea.”
Putin’s strategic blunder
The invasion, however, was framed as a severe strategic mistake by Putin, who Lough said initially misinformed Beijing by expecting a quick victory.
China, he explained, had to “accustom itself to the fact that Putin’s word, in this case, was not reliable,” calling the invasion an “extraordinary strategic blunder.”
This mistake had unintended consequences that benefited NATO. Yu noted that Putin’s goal to “curtail NATO” with his invasion of Ukraine did the exact opposite, resulting in Finland and Sweden joining the alliance.
Finland’s membership is “one of the most consequential results of the war in Ukraine, detrimental to Russia,” making the nation a “forward deployed fortress of NATO.”
Mandate for White House
The central message for the Trump administration was to ensure a decisive outcome in Ukraine.
Heinrichs stated that the US must “further continue support for Ukraine and make sure that Ukraine succeeds as an independent, sovereign democracy, ends Russia’s war there” or enables it to “have battlefield successes” to “bolster the Eastern, Central Front of the NATO alliance.”
Lough offered that the eventual end of the conflict would be a powerful step in itself: “If the war in Ukraine can be ended... I think that will take some of the short-term impetus out of this relationship.”
Yu also suggested an economic lever, urging the US to focus sanctions against “Western banks who are doing really terrible business with Russia secretly,” naming the British bank HSBC as the “leading rogue bank of the world.”