OPINION:
While engaging in shuttle diplomacy to negotiate an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration should be grappling with the significance of the moment relative to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s new Cold War on the U.S. and our allies.
Russia has become an active and impactful tool of China’s ruthless global influence campaign. China never considered pressuring Russia to end the war because China is benefiting too much from the ongoing fighting.
Vladimir Putin has failed to achieve his strategic objective of overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine and installing a puppet regime. China, meanwhile, is exploiting Russia’s geopolitical weakness for its own economic and strategic gain while transforming Mr. Putin’s quagmire into a proxy war against the U.S.
China imports Russian hydrocarbons at reduced prices and exports large supplies of fiber-optic cable, equipment and manufactured goods, many of which are dual military use, to Russia.
While the Kremlin has been spilling Russia’s blood and treasure in Ukraine, China has been encroaching on Russia’s historical sphere of influence in Central Asia. Threatening Taiwan’s sovereignty and militarizing the South China Sea, Mr. Xi sees the precedent-setting benefits to China’s aggressive national security strategy of the Kremlin’s brutal violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and barbaric effort to subjugate its population.
China wants to weaken Europe and drive a wedge between the U.S. and NATO, thereby rendering Europe more vulnerable to Chinese wolf warrior diplomacy and mercantilist unfair trade practices.
China has also incorporated valuable lessons about engaging in combat against NATO weapons, integrating intelligence into the battlefield and deploying drone technology.
Without China’s diplomatic, military and economic support, Russia’s war machine would have already likely ground to a halt. According to a recent congressional report, China is now on a “war footing” with a massive expansion of nuclear capabilities and missile silos.
Chinese hackers have penetrated critical U.S. infrastructure. China continues to steal U.S. intellectual property while engaging in predatory dumping, price manipulation, deliberate overcapacity, use of forced labor and subsidized exports, with the aim of wiping out U.S. industry in strategic sectors such as steel, semiconductors and critical minerals.
The U.S. intelligence community recently assessed that China, whose objective was to surpass the U.S. as the leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, now represents the greatest military threat to the U.S.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently testified that China is the United States’ “most capable strategic competitor,” whose “military is fielding advanced capabilities, including hypersonic weapons, stealth aircraft, advanced submarines, stronger space and cyber warfare assets and a larger arsenal of nuclear weapons.”
China is a communist police state guilty of massive human rights violations at home and abroad. It is at war with democracy and every principle enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Framing the Russia-Ukraine war not only as Mr. Putin’s attempted imperial land grab but also as China’s proxy war against the U.S. and our allies, the Trump administration should take three key steps.
First, the intelligence community must continue to recruit spies and steal secrets from Beijing to Moscow so that the Trump administration can consider policy options to understand and most effectively exploit the fault lines in the bilateral relationship between the two dictatorships.
Second, the Trump administration should be doubling down on our allies in Europe and the Pacific, who are a powerful force multiplier for U.S. national security.
Mr. Xi wants China’s adversaries to be weak and divided because together we project the power necessary to protect internationally recognized borders and commercial trade.
Third, the Trump administration should walk away from any chimerical peace deal that rewards Mr. Putin’s aggression and leaves Ukraine and Europe vulnerable to future Russian military attacks.
Mr. Putin has violated every international agreement he and his predecessors have signed.
Only a bayonet aimed at his chest will deter him from threatening the independence of his neighbors and the $1 trillion worth of trade the U.S. enjoys with Europe.
How we resolve the most destructive land war in Europe since World War II will have long-term implications for countering, defending and deterring China’s multifarious attacks on the U.S. and our allies.
There is no chance of splitting Mr. Putin from Mr. Xi, but if Russia fails to achieve its objectives in Ukraine, then there is still potential for a U.S.-Russia reset once Mr. Putin is no longer ruling the Kremlin.
That’s another motive for Mr. Xi’s persistent continuation of the “no-limits” bilateral partnership he and Mr. Putin declared at the Olympic Games in Beijing 20 days before Russia invaded Ukraine.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com.
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