For Trump, foreign policy should begin and end with China

On Jan. 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. His election represents what could be the biggest geopolitical shakeup in the global order since the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago next month.

{mosads}How Trump deals with the world is of critical importance to the standing of the United States and the trajectory of that standing over the next several decades.

With the “economic center of gravity” shifting inexorably to the Eastern Hemisphere, it is in America’s national interest not to allow a rising China the ability to dominate its neighborhood.

This, not a revanchist Russia or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is the real challenge that could permanently knock the U.S. from its perch as the single greatest nation on Earth.

Thus, avoiding this outcome should be of paramount importance. This means committing to a geopolitical strategy that is long-term, systematic and proactive rather than reactive and scattershot.

In May, this author previously wrote in The Hill that then-candidate Trump really could make “America’s foreign policy great again” by breaking with the largely bipartisan status quo that has dominated the post-Cold War presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

In particular, it was suggested that Trump embrace a geopolitical design called the “Iron Quadrilateral,” which focused U.S. attention on its greatest long-term national interests.

The Iron Quadrilateral consists of four interrelated and mutually reinforcing geopolitical imperatives:

1. Conducting a “Reverse Nixon” to China by tilting to Russia in the same way President Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger tilted to China against the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
2. Embracing a strategy in the Middle East similar to that used by Cardinal Richelieu during Europe’s Thirty Years War, which amounts to a balancing of power between the Sunni and Shiite poles of influence in the Middle East.
3. Continue to stand by Japan while encouraging its development of domestic defense.
4. Embrace and build up India as a legitimate counterweight to Chinese aggrandizement in southeastern Asia.

The third and fourth components of the Iron Quadrilateral fall firmly within conventional foreign policy thinking and would likely be embraced by any administration.

On the other hand, the first two cut against the grain of most of the foreign policy establishment. Only a Trump administration might be willing to embrace, or, most importantly, be capable of embracing these imperatives.

Each of the post-Cold War presidents, and their myriad advisers, pursued a vision of foreign policy as a type of global social work.

Most damaging, however, was that each also sought to accommodate China.

This was done in the hope that an economically growing China would moderate politically and become a “responsible stakeholder,” as then-Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said in 2005, in the post-World War II international architecture.

Over the years, this vision appears to have become a dangerously misguided mirage.

Rather than fall for this siren song of comity, Trump has shown that he wants to focus like a laser on American national interests, without distractions.

Despite suffering much unfair criticism from the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, Trump, virtually alone amongst the 2016 contenders, stated that working with Russia is in our interests.

He, rather than the Washington-based elite, argued that confronting the only nation on the face of the planet that truly represents an existential threat to the U.S. — courtesy of its 1,700 plus deployed nuclear weapons — is unwise and dangerous and should be avoided except under the most extraordinary of circumstances.

This unconventional view dovetails perfectly with the first geopolitical imperative of the Iron Quadrilateral and could be leveraged to find ways to assure that Russia does not, over time, become permanently estranged from the U.S.

Should it do so, it may well become an energy vassal and arms dealer to China.

Unfortunately, conventional foreign policy thinkers seem committed to exactly this type of aggressive policy.

This risks pushing Russia into China’s arms and tilting the geopolitical balance of power in Eurasia decisively against the U.S. This is something the U.S. fought two world wars and the Cold War to prevent and would be the equivalent of America’s ultimate geopolitical nightmare.

While Trump has spoken of dealing with ISIS in a tough way, it can be argued that the best way to deal with it is to let local actors, even those deemed odious like Syrian President Bashar Assad, take the lead in destroying the would-be “caliphate.”

This is where the second imperative of the Iron Quadrilateral, or the “Cardinal Richelieu” strategy, emerges.

Richelieu was France’s leading foreign policymaker under the reign of Louis XIII and during the Thirty Years War (1618 to 1648). He embraced a classic “divide and conquer” strategy to avoid having France chewed up in the maws of the Hapsburg family, members of which sat on thrones to both the east and west of France.

This strategy offers key lessons for America’s approach to the Middle East.

Rather than impose Western values on contending parties in the region, a Richelieu strategy will actively let various jihadists elements fight themselves until exhaustion forces more moderate elements to negotiate an end to war.

A new balance of power will eventually emerge between the Shiite powers, centered on Iran, and the Sunnis centered on either the Saudis or, perhaps, a resurgent Turkey.

To the extent that this can be hastened, it in the U.S. national interests to see this outcome achieved with as little exposure by American military personnel as possible.

By not becoming ever more distracted in the Middle East and by working to make Russia a pivot player between the U.S. and China, the U.S. will be able to focus most of its attention on keeping China’s rise within bounds that do not unduly harm its national interests.

Further distractions in the sands of Mesopotamia while engaging in a Cold War 2.0 with Russia will only buy time for China to continue its present strategy of “salami slicing” in East Asia, as Foreign Policy notes. Eventually, this will lead to the displacing of the U.S. as the main global superpower.

This is why the Iron Quadrilateral makes sense. It avoids those massive distractions and zeroes in on the definitive question of dealing with China. It also offers a coherent, big picture framework with which to most effectively channel President-elect Trump’s correct gut instincts on foreign policy.

Greg R. Lawson is a contributing analyst at Wikistrat.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.