Trump re-called Putin back to the world's power table: the historical triangle is reversing, US-Russia resumed big-power deals or directed to the CCP regime

In the past few weeks, U.S.-Russian relations have seen a series of changes that cannot be understood in isolation. Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe has entered Moscow to hold working-level talks with Russian Foreign Intelligence Director Sergei Nareskin; Russian Treasury Secretary Anton Siluanov has personally sat in the U.S.-hosted G20 meeting and held bilateral talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent four years later; Trump has then again sent Steve Witkov and Jared Kushner to move to Moscow with a new Ukrainian peace plan and possibly to Kiev. Meanwhile, Putin has not fully withdrawn from the Far East and Middle East in order to restore U.S.-Russian contacts: he has visited the island of Sousse, Russia and the new government of Syria have re

These events have not yet represented a US-Russian alliance in the traditional sense, but have demonstrated a change that is more important than “relieving relations”: the United States is restoring Russia’s status as a direct trading target of world-class powers. For Focus China, it is truly questionable not only how Trump ended the war in Ukraine, but whether he is re-launching the US-Russian strategic triangle – when Washington used the Soviet-China split to turn Beijing into a force to grip Moscow; today, is the United States in turn using Russia to dismantle the strategic depths that the Xi Jinping regime has relied on Russia in recent years?

From the CIA to the U.S. G20: Russia is reintegrated into the system of world power

On August 27, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Agency, Nareshkin, confirmed that the two sides had discussed sensitive issues within the scope of their respective intelligence agencies. Trump himself described the visit as “half routine”, but in the context of the continuing Russian war and long-standing high tension in U.S.-Russian security relations, the highest CIA chief personally entered Moscow, indicating that the most sensitive national security interface of U.S. Russia is being restored.

This change then went into the field of economic governance from the security sector. On August 31, Siluanov appeared at the G20 finance ministers and central banking governors’ meeting in Ashville, North Carolina, which was the first Russian finance ministers to attend the forum on line after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war. European officials have publicly expressed dissatisfaction with this, but the U.S. host still invited Russia back to the meeting table. Besent then held a bilateral meeting with Siluanov, although it was clear that Ukraine would not give Russia an economic downturn before the end of the war, the two sides have resumed discussions on peace plans, financial cooperation and possible future exchanges of interests.

The two events, put together, mean far more than ordinary diplomatic contacts.The CIA represents the most sensitive national security channels, and the Treasury Minister represents the institutional global economic governance channels.The two interfaces resumed simultaneously, indicating that the Trump administration is shifting from “excluding Russia from the system as much as possible” to “continuing to pressure Russia while re-treating Russia as a trading power”.

The power of Russia’s great powers has never disappeared because of sanctions.The change is whether the United States is willing to re-recognize that power must be included in negotiations.

Ukraine is again becoming a big deal between the US and Russia, not just an agency consumption.

On September 4, Trump announced that Witkov and Kushner would visit again to promote a new Russian-Ukrainian peace plan. Zelensky said the two were expected to travel to Ukraine after their visit to Moscow. Trump said the United States had formed a concrete idea but had not yet released the details of the plan. It is worth noting that the heating up of US-Russian political contacts did not lead to a ceasefire on the battlefield, and the same day Russian drones also attacked the headquarters of the Ukrainian National Security Agency in Kiev.

This just shows that Trump is using a more typical big-power political approach to dealing with Russia: war can continue, sanctions can continue, military pressure can continue, but negotiations can’t stop.

Trump did not require Putin to give up and qualify for negotiations with the United States, but instead, the United States is directly discussing the end of the war, European security and sanctions arrangements when the war is not over.

Russia’s long-standing pursuit has always been not only of territorial interests on the Ukrainian battlefield, but also of a status issue: whether Russia is still qualified to discuss the European security order directly with the United States.

As long as Washington deals with these issues directly with Moscow, Russia has actually returned to its most valued world power table.

The real shock is not Russia, but the biggest strategic dividend of the Communist Party in recent years.

To understand why this change will directly affect the Communist Party of China, we must first clarify a long-time misleading premise: Xi never controlled Russia, and Russia never accepted Beijing’s leadership.

The biggest strategic gains the Communist Party has really gained in the past few years are not “Russia becomes China’s little brother,” but, on the contrary, Russia’s strategic need for Beijing has risen rapidly after the total breakup of the United States and Russia.

After the Russian-Ukrainian War, Russia suffered large-scale financial, technological, trade and diplomatic sanctions, and China became one of Russia's most important trading partners and industrial supplies sources.In the meantime, Beijing has continuously packaged China-Russia relations as the core symbol of the so-called "world multipolarization", using Russia's nuclear power, energy resources, European military pressure, the seat of the Security Council and the influence of the Middle East, increasing the political voice of the CCP challenging the U.S. dominant order.

Therefore, what Xi Jinping really needs is not Putin’s obedience to Beijing.

What he really needs is that Putin can’t re-deal with the United States.

As long as relations with Russia and the West are permanently locked up in a state of total hostility, the CCP can continue to use Russia to expand its strategic depth; and once Trump reopens the path of power between Russia and the United States, this structure begins to change fundamentally.

Fifty years ago, the U.S. used Beijing to grip Moscow, and today the triangle politics are working in reverse.

This change is most worthy to be observed in the historical coordinates.

In the late 1960s, the Soviet-Chinese conflict had worsened significantly. Historical archives of the U.S. State Department showed that the Nixon administration clearly saw the Soviet-Chinese division as an opportunity to redesign the global balance of power. The core of U.S. so-called “strategic triangular diplomacy” was to improve relations with Beijing, to use China as a strategic counterpart to the Soviet Union, and thus to increase Washington’s negotiating leverage against Moscow. The U.S. official foreign history even clearly concluded that Nixon and Kissinger put pressure on the Soviet Union by improving relations with China, and viewed this approach as an important equal operation during the Cold War.

After Kissinger's secret visit to China in 1971, and Nixon's visit to China in 1972, although Beijing and Washington did not become formal military allies, they formed a clear strategic overlap of interest in jointly preventing the Soviet Union's expansion.The U.S. State Department later concluded that China had seen the Soviet Union instead of the United States as the main security threat, while Washington saw improving relations with China as an important tool to balance Moscow.

Of course, the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union was by no means a result of a single diplomatic operation. Economic imbalances within the Soviet Union, political institutional crises, ethnic problems, arms burden, and lack of control over reforms together constituted the conditions for the collapse. But in the external strategic environment, the U.S. utilized the Sino-Soviet division to weaken the Soviet rotating space and was an important part of the restructuring of the Cold War forces.

Today, a very historically ironic structure is being formed:

At that time it was the United States that used Beijing to weaken Moscow’s strategic depth, and today it could become the United States that used Moscow to dismantle the Communist Party.

Trump doesn’t need to replicate Nixon’s era, nor does he need Russia to become an ally of the United States. As long as Russia is able to re-engage in big dealings with Washington and Beijing at the same time, the U.S.-Russian Triangle has turned from “two-strength ties” over the past few years into a game between three independent power centers.

This is the situation that the CCP is most reluctant to face.

Putin’s goal is not to sit next to Xi Jinping, but to sit back in front of the President of the United States.

In terms of Russia’s long-term strategic behavior, Moscow has never accepted itself as a subordinate state in the Beijing system.

In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, China was long under the Soviet-led socialist camp. In the period of the Soviet-Chinese separation, the conflict between the two countries included both ideological conflicts, as well as those who owned the leadership of the socialist camp and the conflict of national interests.U.S. national security records recorded that the Soviet Union stopped nuclear aid to China from 1959 to 1960, withdrew technical experts and stopped large amounts of economic assistance, and the Soviet-Chinese relationship further deteriorated, and Beijing has long not forgotten this experience.

This history means that Russia today is more unlikely to accept an international order centered on Xi Jinping.

What Putin really seeks is the restoration of Russia’s own great power: talks about nuclear power with the United States, talks about European security, talks about the Middle East, talks about energy, talks about global rules.

So Russia’s approach to Beijing over the past few years does not mean that Moscow has accepted the strategic leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

A simpler explanation is that after a complete split between Russia and the West, Beijing has become one of the most valuable external partners.

As soon as the U.S. gives Russia a second channel, Putin will be given a choice again.

In international politics, having choice is power itself.

China invests large amounts of industrial resources but cannot buy Russia’s strategic loyalty.

The Russian war further demonstrated this.

In recent years, Chinese enterprises and industrial supply chains have supplied Russia with massive amounts of machine tools, electronic components, drone-related products, optical equipment and other dual-use products, which have significant value for the maintenance of the Russian war industry.

But these investments did not translate into Beijing’s dominance over Russia’s strategic direction.

Russia’s core military strength remains based on its own nuclear power, missile system, air defense system, military-industrial system and strategic decision-making mechanisms.

This is the most dangerous place for Xi after Trump reopened US-Russian relations.

The resources Beijing has invested in China-Russia relations over the past few years can be bought in exchange for trade, supply chains and diplomatic cooperation, but can’t buy Russia’s permanent strategic loyalty.

If the U.S. is able to meet the needs of Russia’s most valued majority, then Putin will be able to continue trade with China while discussing world affairs with the U.S. again.

From the Chinese point of view, this is more difficult than Russia’s openly “turning toward the United States,” because it means Beijing can no longer regard the permanent hostility of the United States to Russia as a stable asset.

Putin: Russia's pressure on Japan is producing the strategic outcomes that the United States hopes to see

While Russia has re-established high-level contacts with the United States, it has not shrunk in the Asian direction.

On August 13, Putin visited Russia-controlled, Japan-called Iturup, one of the so-called four northern islands that Japan claimed.

In isolation, this is only a long-standing Russian-Japanese territorial dispute, but put into today’s Northeast Asian security pattern, Putin’s move has produced a very remarkable strategic outflow effect.

In recent years, Japan has been expanding its counter-attack capabilities, purchasing U.S.-made “Tax” cruise missiles and increasing defense investments.North Korea’s criticism of Japan’s military expansion is also clearly focused on Japan’s long-range strike capabilities, U.S.-made “Tax” missiles, and Japan-US-Korea security cooperation.

The U.S. has openly called on its Indo-Pacific allies to take on more defense responsibilities.The U.S. Defense Secretary called on Asian partners to significantly increase defense spending at the Shangri-La Dialogue this year, and directly listed China's rapid military expansion as one of the core reasons.

Therefore, a strategic result chain is becoming clearer:

• Russia continues to put security pressure on the north of Japan;
• Japan further acquires domestic political grounds for strengthening its arms;
• Japan expands its military power and strengthens the overall system of U.S. military expansion in the western Pacific against the Chinese Communist Party.

This does not require the assumption that Moscow and Washington have a public “stimulating Japanese military expansion” agreement.

What Focus on China really deserves to observe is the strategic outcome: Russia’s actions are pushing Japan to become more militarized, while a Japan with a stronger military force and a deeper bond with the U.S. security system is ultimately changing the strategic environment of the CPC in the Western Pacific.

Syria releases another signal: Russia is back on the table and does not need to give up global strategic assets first

The same logic appears in Syria.

After the Assad regime’s fall, Russia’s military presence at the Hemeim air base and the Port of Tartus was uncertain, but in August this year, Russia and the new Syrian government reached a Memorandum of Understanding, in which parts of the facilities were transferred to joint training centers, with Russian troops continuing to reside.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is rapidly improving relations with Syrian President Ahmed Saleh. Trump has decided to push Syria out of the U.S. list of “supporting terrorist countries” and has publicly stated that U.S. companies are ready to participate in Syria’s reconstruction; the Saleh government has also been invited to participate in the G7 summit before, and Syria is rapidly re-entering the Western-led international system.

This does not prove that the United States and Russia have divided spheres of power in Syria.

But it proves something even more important: Russia’s re-entry into the U.S.-dominated trading system is not conditional on Russia first emptying all its overseas strategic assets.

A new Syrian government with significantly improved relations with the United States still allows Russia to retain part of its military presence.

This result is closer to competitive coexistence in traditional power politics than to zero-sum expulsion.

US-Russia has even seen interests intersect on global military rules.

On September 4, in the deadly autonomous weapons negotiations under the UN framework, the US-Russia showed another worrying policy overlap.

128 countries participated in the discussion, most countries want to push for stricter autonomous weapons standards, while the United States is more inclined to adopt non-binding guidelines. Russia and India, Turkey supported the US direction, US-Russia opposition made clear questions about the consensus on the rules.

This case, although small, suggests that future US-Russian relations may not have to appear as a formal alliance.

The great powers can fully confront each other on the Ukrainian battlefield, while having common interests in their own freedom of military action, AI warfare, and global rule-making.

This is the more realistic form of “United States Russian Hand”:

• Not alliance, but selective coordination;
• not a common ideology, but the common interests of the great powers;
• not Russia following the United States, but the re-recognition of each other on some issues as a world-class force that must deal with problems together.

As long as this model continues to expand, the external environment facing China will continue to change.

The most symbolic contradiction appeared on the same G20 table: Russia came back, and the Communist Party was named by 19 countries separately.

What really deserves Beijing’s caution may be taking place at the same G20 summit.

As Russia’s finance minister was re-invited by the United States to sit back at the meeting table, the United States pushed all 19 of the G20 financial leaders except China to support action against so-called “non-market policies” and structures that cause global trade imbalances. The final meeting chairman made a clear statement on the relevant content, and China did not join this consensus.

This scene has a very strong political symbol.

In recent years, the West has tried to isolate Russia, while the Communist Party continues to view Russia as an important partner in challenging the U.S. order.

Russia has reappeared at the same G20 finance ministers’ meeting hosted by the United States, while China’s economic model has become the only member that has not joined the consensus on an important issue.

This, of course, cannot be simply interpreted as the “19 Coalition of Anti-Communist Countries.”

But from the perspective of the rearrangement of major powers, the contradiction is very clear: while the Trump administration restores contact with Russia, it continues to push major economies to jointly pressure on China’s long-dependent industrial subsidies, export expansion and so-called non-market economic models.

This is not only a diplomatic gesture, but the external conditions of the Chinese economic system.

Focus on China: Trump may be rebuilding a reverse strategic triangle

If these events are reconnected, the Trump administration’s potential strategic logic begins to become clear.

The United States does not need to solve all the contradictions with Russia at the same time.

It only needs to do one thing:

Don’t give Russia forever to the Communist Party.

As long as the U.S. restores security, financial, regional and global rules with Moscow, Russia will no longer rely on Beijing alone.

And each time Russia adds an external option, the strategic gains of the Communist Party on Russian relations are reduced in part.

The most valuable comparison to the Nixon-era strategic triangle is not ideology, but methodology.

At that time, Washington discovered that Beijing and Moscow had unfathomable gaps, and used Beijing to balance the Soviet Union.

Today, if Trump believes that the excessive closeness between China and Russia is no longer in the interests of the United States, resuming deals with Russia can in turn weaken the strategic depth of the Chinese Communist Party.

The historical triangle is undergoing a reversal.

From Balance to Dissolution: U.S.-Russian Reunification Could Change the External Conditions of Survival of the Communist Regime

Focus on China believes that this strategic change may eventually go beyond the general sense of “balancing the Chinese Communist Party.”

A regime’s long-term stability has never depended not only on high internal pressures, but also on the external strategic environment.

Xi Jinping’s regime has been expanding military power, industrial subsidies, overseas political influence and global system competition over the past decade, and one of its important external supports is the attempt to establish a Eurasian strategic network that can weaken the U.S.-dominated system.

Russia’s role in this network is irreplaceable.

It has one of the world’s largest nuclear powers, energy, European military depth, influence in Central Asia and the Middle East, and veto power in the UN Security Council.

If the U.S. is able to re-establish Russia as a truly independent strategic center from Beijing, the loss China will face is not the loss of a trading partner, but the loss of a portion of Eurasian strategic depth.

Meanwhile, Japan is increasing its military capabilities, Europe is increasingly alert to China’s economic model, and the United States is still in control of the world’s major financial, technological, military and alliance resources.

If these forces are further superimposed, they could form a structure that continues to crush the external living space of the CCP regime.

In this sense, the ultimate strategic effect of the reconciliation of U.S.-Russian relations with the great powers is likely to move from constricting the Communist Party of China to weakening the regime of the Communist Party of China and creating an increasingly unfavorable international environment for the ultimate dissolution of the Communist regime.

When Beijing helped the United States to change the fate of the Soviet Union, today Moscow could be a variable in changing the fate of the Communist Party of China.

The irony of history often comes from the reversal of the relationship of power.

Half a century ago, when Beijing was closer to the United States because of its split with Moscow, Washington gained huge initiative in the Cold War strategic triangle.

Today, however, Xi Jinping tries to rely on the Russian-Western split and turn China-Russia cooperation into the strategic basis for the Chinese Communist Party to challenge the American system.

The problem is that Putin is not Xi Jinping who can fix the chess on the chessboard.

Russia remains a world-class power with independent national interests, an independent nuclear power and ambitions for an independent power.

If Trump is able to restore enough room for negotiations to Moscow, the U.S. may regain a capability that had been extremely effective decades ago:

Let your two main strategic opponents not really form a permanent unified camp.

Russia does not need to openly break up with the Communist Party.

Putin does not need to declare joining any anti-communist coalition.

As long as Russia is able to sit back in front of the U.S. president and talk directly with Washington about Europe, security, energy, finance, and the global order, the strategic conditions for the CCP’s reliance on Russia’s complete split in recent years have begun to loosen.

So what is really worth observing today is not whether Trump and Putin will be friends.

But there is another more important issue:

Is the United States turning the strategic triangle that once played a role in the Soviet Union into the Chinese Communist Party?

If the answer is, in the end, yes, then Russia’s re-entering the table is not just a change in U.S.-Russian relations.

It could be the starting point for a fundamental reversal in the external strategic environment of the Xi Jinping regime.