Few would think of Donald Trump’s foreign policy as Nixonian or Reaganesque, but it sounds like the president is playing their sheet music. In 1972, Nixon went to China to engineer the Sino-Soviet split, fracturing communist unity in classic divide-and-conquer diplomacy. In the 1980s, Reagan launched an arms race that the Soviet Union could not afford, leading to Soviet collapse and U.S. victory in the Cold War.
Trump’s bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, so inexplicable to almost everyone, has the effect, intended or not, of keeping Putin from aligning with China. Reportedly, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has recommended this general approach in meetings with the president. On the East Asia front, the president is starting a trade war that trade-dependent China cannot afford.
