on | US-China-Russia triangle of Great Power realpolitik – Firstpost

On the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow received the latest in a series of geopolitical gifts from America. An official statement by the G7 group of global powers criticising the invasion was diluted by the US, refusing to call Russia the aggressor.

The other six members of the G7 — Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan — are already reeling from the breakneck speed with which the Donald Trump administration is moving to bring Russia in from the cold. Now they face more embarrassment.

Moscow is reportedly considering allowing approximately $300 billion in Russian assets, illegally frozen by the US and Western Europe after the Ukraine invasion, to be used for reconstructing Ukrainian infrastructure devastated by the brutal three-year war. The funds would also be deployed to rebuild 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory that Russia currently holds following the invasion.

There’s more bad news in store for Europe and Ukraine: the US may begin to lift some of the sweeping sanctions imposed on Russia by the Joe Biden administration. The most important ones are reversing the ban on Russia from the global SWIFT financial system and easing restrictions on the sale of Russian oil and gas.

That’s not all. With the 2028 Olympic Games scheduled to be held in Los Angeles in Trump’s final year as president, Russia could be re-admitted to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other global sports bodies that govern world athletics and tennis tournaments where individual Russian competitors are currently allowed to participate without using the Russian flag.

Ukraine has been kept out of early US-Russia negotiations on ending the war. Trump has meanwhile lavished praise on Russia, calling it a “great power” and dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “moderately successful comedian who could soon lose his country”.

Trump’s resentment towards Zelenskyy goes back to his first presidential term in 2017-2021. Zelenskyy took office as Ukrainian president in 2019 and stonewalled Trump’s attempts to get incriminating evidence against Biden’s son, Hunter.

Hunter Biden was a highly paid director in the controversial Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. Trump blames Zelenskyy for withholding evidence that could have saved him from the first of his two Congressional impeachments.

The view from Beijing

Watching events unfold is Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump frequently praises Xi, calling him a “brilliant man”. Notably, Trump didn’t use harsh rhetoric against China in his first month in office. He imposed a smaller than expected tariff of 10 per cent on Chinese goods.

All that changed on February 21, 2025. In a direct attack on the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Trump White House issued a memorandum late on Friday night titled “America First Investment Policy”.

The memo warned: “Certain foreign adversaries, including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), systematically direct and facilitate investment in United States companies and assets to obtain cutting-edge technologies, intellectual property, and leverage in strategic industries. The PRC pursues these strategies in diverse ways, both visible and concealed, and often through partner companies or investment funds in third countries.

“The PRC does not allow United States companies to take over their critical infrastructure, and the United States should not allow the PRC to take over United States critical infrastructure. PRC-affiliated investors are targeting the crown jewels of United States technology, food supplies, farmland, minerals, natural resources, ports, and shipping terminals. The PRC is also increasingly exploiting United States capital to develop and modernize its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses, which poses significant risk to the United States homeland and Armed Forces of the United States around the world.”

“The United States will establish new rules to stop US companies and investors from investing in industries that advance the PRC’s national Military-Civil Fusion strategy and stop PRC-affiliated persons from buying up critical American businesses and assets, allowing only those investments that serve American interests.”

Notwithstanding his new attack on Beijing, Trump has floated the idea of a US-China summit with Xi following his bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine war.

Reprising Yalta Conference?

For Trump, keen to set his imprint on history, this harks back to the summit held in Yalta, Crimea, in February 1945 between US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the end of the Second World War.

The summit was called by the three leading powers to determine the post-WWII global order. The location of the summit in Yalta in the Soviet Union’s Crimean peninsula has historical resonance. Moscow annexed Russian-speaking Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, triggering events that led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine eight years later.

Two of the three global powers at the Yalta Conference 80 years ago were the US and Russia’s predecessor state, the Soviet Union. Britain has been replaced in the Great Power triangle today by China.

While a US-Russia-China joint summit is implausible because the US regards Beijing as an existential economic, military and technological threat, separate US-Russia and US-China summits are on the agenda.

The rehabilitation of Russia has evoked mixed feelings in Beijing. Since the Ukraine war began, heavily sanctioned Russia has relied on China to buy the oil and gas that Europe banned. In the process Moscow has become a junior partner in the China-Russia alliance where it was once the dominant partner.

The diminution of Russian power improves China’s bargaining leverage with Moscow. The prospect of Russia regaining its former economic and military power is not entirely in China’s long-term interest.

For India, the strategy is to hold its cards close to its chest. Despite Trump’s rhetoric, the India-US strategic partnership has intrinsic geostrategic logic and self-driven momentum.

India’s relations with China are meanwhile improving. In South Africa last week for the G20 foreign ministers summit, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar pointedly told his unsmiling Chinese counterpart Wang Yi: “Our NSA and foreign secretary have visited China and there have been discussions about various aspects of our relationship. India and China have worked hard to preserve and protect the G20. This in itself testifies to the importance of international cooperation.”

Angered by the attack on China in last Friday’s White House memorandum “America First Investment Policy”, there is now concern in Western capitals that Xi could interpret Trump’s endorsement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an unspoken invitation to invade Taiwan.

That could be the realpolitik consequence of Trump’s America First.

The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.