In an interview with the media, John Milesheimer threw the theory that the United States should end military aid to Ukraine as soon as possible and soften relations with Russia, not on the grounds of saving Russia, but to “drawn it back” from China’s arms.
He believes that Russia is no longer an opponent that can challenge the U.S. order, but the real opponent is China. Continuing to waste resources on the battlefield in Ukraine will only cause the United States to "lose both its wife and its troops."
The United States 'strategic misjudgment brings China and Russia closer
This is not the first time Mearsheimer has talked about the Russia-Ukraine War. As early as 2014, when the Crimean crisis broke out, he clearly pointed out that the reason why Ukraine became a battlefield for great powers was that the United States and NATO's eastward expansion caused it.
At the time, he warned that continuing to push Ukraine into the western camp would only force Russia to go in vain.
Ten years later, he still insists on this judgment.
And this time, he focused on China-Russia relations – in his opinion, the continued support of the United States to Ukraine not only could not change the pattern of the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, but instead pushed Russia step by step into China’s arms.
Such a strategic self-righteous behavior was simply a big mistake in his eyes.
His core point is: Although Russia can still cause some noise now, it is no longer the big country that could be on an equal footing with the United States during the Cold War.
Its economy has long been wiped out of energy structures and sanctions, and its military power has also been greatly weakened due to the war in Ukraine.The United States does not need to regard Russia as the enemy number one, but should use its main strategic resources against China.
In other words, Millsheimer believes that the United States has gone in the wrong direction, sprinkling its main fire on a recessive rival, but separating itself from its real competitor, China.
He even used a very face-to-face metaphor: this war for China is like a downfall, the United States has no time to take care of itself, Russia is proactively approaching, and Beijing has nothing to do, and it has gathered a huge dividend.
The U.S. is now in a situation of “one-of-a-kind battle”, with decentralized resources and ambiguous strategies that have gradually lost its competitive advantage in the Asia-Pacific region.
But the question also arises: Is it really because the US has become so close to China and Russia?
Mearsheimer emphasized that the U.S. military support for Ukraine has "pushed Russia into China's arms." The relationship between China and Russia has never been just an expedient measure to be "forced to do nothing."
As early as more than a decade ago, China and Russia continued to interact in the fields of the United Nations, energy cooperation, military exercises, and security affairs. Although the two countries are not completely in agreement on many issues, they both know that in an international system dominated by the United States, cooperation is at least more realistic than being defeated one by one.
In particular, after 2014, Russia was kicked out of the G8 by the West, financial sanctions, and energy exports were blocked, while China threw its olive branches in energy trade, scientific and technological cooperation, and financial payments.
There are some things that the United States really cannot do just by saying it.
The foundation of this relationship has long been no longer a question of "who embraces whom", but the trust gradually accumulated through long-term strategic interactions.
And Milesheimer’s logic actually smells a bit “anti-Nixon.” In the 1970s, the United States actively attracted China to fight the Soviet Union. Now, Trump and his supporters in turn advocate “attracted Russia against China,” which is called “anti-Nixonism.”
Russia is not stupid, and it knows that America’s hostility to it is not one thing overnight.
Today you said you want to improve relations, and tomorrow there may be another round of sanctions. Putin also knows that the strategic goal of the United States has never changed-to weaken its opponents, whether China or Russia.
However, China has never focused its China-Russia relations on "joint anti-American" and values multilateral cooperation, global governance, and economic complementarity rather than Cold War-style "alliance confrontation." The foundation of China-Russia relations lies in the joint opposition to unipolar hegemony, rather than who provoked whom first.
Therefore, Milesheimer's theory of "pulling Russia away" has ignored a reality: China-Russia relations are not that the United States can dismantle at will, much less that the US phrase "we're fine" can make Putin stand down.
In his speech, Millsheimer said: "Russia can no longer dominate, but China can."This sounds like a strategic high assessment of China, and actually behind it is the deep anxiety of the American strategic community about the rise of China.
He meant that Russia, no matter how frightened, could scare European nations, relying on the legacy of the Cold War—nuclear weapons.
China is different. It ranks second in the world economically, manufacturing is the world's factory, science and technology is rapidly catching up, and the speed of military development has attracted global attention.
So, he thinks, if the United States now is still wasting energy on Russia, it is a mismatch of strategic resources.Instead of consuming it in the dirt in Ukraine, it is better to hurry and focus on building a network of allies in the Asia-Pacific region to contain China.
Mearsheimer once said: "This war is a nectar from heaven to China." But this statement is neither accurate nor fair.
The reality is that after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, China did not take advantage of the situation. Russia was neither supplied with weapons nor instigated hostility on international occasions. Instead, it has been promoting peace talks on the United Nations platform, proposing a "ceasefire and end war" initiative, emphasizing the maintenance of global food and energy security.
As for “fisherman profit” is actually more like a psychological consolation after the failure of the US strategy. like a gambler loses money and finally throws the responsibility on the side of the person who did not bet, the reason is “you stop me.”
Ironically, the United States is now accusing China and Russia of getting too close, while continuously strengthening its encirclement policy against China and Russia.
The approach of Sino-Russian relations is the result of years of economic complementarity and gradual integration of international order demands, not a "quick finished product" catalyzed by war overnight.
Millsheimer’s words sound like a “self-reflection” in the U.S. strategic community, but in the end, it’s still a logical implementation of U.S. interests. He wants to ease his attitude toward Russia, not for world peace, but to concentrate on suppressing China.
Millsheimer’s theory once awakened America’s many strategic miscarriages, but this time, he may have overestimated America’s control and underestimated China’s strategic resilience.
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It is necessary to end the war on Ukraine to wrest Russiafrom the embrace of China-MearsheimerOctober 28th,202523:39