“Rather than pulling Moscow away from Beijing, as former President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once divided the Sino-Soviet alliance, the concessions Trump offers to the Russian dictator will likely be pocketed. Then, those favors will be used as negotiating leverage to improve, but nonetheless deepen Russia‘s increasingly unbalanced relationship with China. Just read the press release from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang-Li at the G20 meeting last week.”

Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, as former President Theodore Roosevelt once advocated, President Donald Trump has threatened to turn Canada into the 51st state, to annex Greenland from Denmark, and to forcibly displace 2 million Palestinians to create the Gaza Riviera.

By doing so, Trump is continuously breaking one of the cardinal rules of international relations—great powers don’t bluff. Though bluffing might work in poker or business, it has profound but often unintended consequences in international relations.

Like former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden before him, Trump is attempting to reset America’s relationship with Russia—again. Not only does this take his bluffing to new heights, but he is also sacrificing his political capital, and driving a wedge between Washington and its allies—namely, but not exclusively, under the pretext of pulling Moscow away from Beijing.

Moral reprehensibility aside, Trump’s rehabilitation of Russian war criminal Vladimir Putin is destined to fail for at least two reasons. First, though China and Russia are not allies in the western sense of the word, they have spent more than a decade collaborating to undermine America’s credibility and reduce its primacy in the international system—steering them in a separate direction is almost impossible.

Second, Vladimir Putin cannot be bought or replaced. He fears Russian society revolting against his rule, but also being murdered in a palace coup orchestrated by the Siloviki, being prosecuted by his successors, or being hunted by his enemies if he were ever granted exile. Like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin before him, a dictator of his stature has no choice but to remain in power, and therefore to continue his crusade against Ukraine and the West, until he dies, is defeated, or deposed.

Rather than pulling Moscow away from Beijing, as former President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once divided the Sino-Soviet alliance, the concessions Trump offers to the Russian dictator will likely be pocketed. Then, those favors will be used as negotiating leverage to improve, but nonetheless deepen Russia’s increasingly unbalanced relationship with China. Just read the press release from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang-Li at the G20 meeting last week.

To say that Trump is overplaying America’s hand with regard to Russia is an understatement. Worst of all, this sends the wrong signals to all relevant actors and interested observers. To America’s allies, it serves as a warning to reduce dependence on Washington and look for partners elsewhere. To America’s adversaries, it reveals that it’s bad to be Washington’s enemy, but far worse to be its ally.

Europe holds the strongest hand against Russia—not Washington. While commerce between Moscow and America has always been insignificant, that was not the case for European trade flows with Russia before the Russian war criminals invaded peaceful Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The overwhelming majority of Russia’s estimated $300 billion in frozen assets are also held in Europe, not in America.

Trump is overplaying his hand against Ukraine too. America has some 100,000 troops deployed across Europe. In the event of a land war against Russia, NATO might be able to deploy another half a million at best. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Armed Forces stand at 1 million soldiers strong, and they serve no other purpose than to defend European civilization against Russian barbarism.

Instead of supporting Ukraine’s resolution commemorating the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion at the United Nations—or committing to permanently deploy a contingent of American troops at “Fort Trump” in Poland, to be built and paid for by the Polish government—Trump is simply teaching Europe to learn to live without America.

Old habits die hard, and Trump’s negative perception of NATO is decades old. His commitment to America’s European allies is shaky at best, and nobody in their right minds still believes that Trump would endanger New York or Washington to attack—let alone to nuke—Moscow or Saint Petersburg in defense of Warsaw or Paris. That will never happen, so Europe must make adjustments.

Power abhors a vacuum. As America reduces its commitment to the old continent, Europe will simply forge closer ties with Ukraine and Turkey, the two most powerful armies in the region, for protection against Moscow. Britain and France allied with the Ottoman Empire against Russia (and Greece) during the Crimean War, and Europe will seek a similar arrangement in the next era of European geopolitics. Such is the nature of the balance of power.

From the Punic Wars to the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War, the rules of geopolitics have been consistent for thousands of years. Great power competition doesn’t change just because the head of state is sympathetic to the other party, as Trump is toward the war criminal Putin. I fear that both Trump and America are going to learn that lesson the hard way. Sooner rather than later, in the Indo-Pacific.

(George Monastiriakos is a professor of law at the University of Ottawa)

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

(Source: Newsweek )