New chapter in US diplomacy playbook - alienate both China and Russia

ONE of the rules that a global power needs to follow when it operates in a multipolar international system is to ensure that other major powers would not gang up on it, among other things by not antagonising all of them at the same time and not providing them incentives to band together and mobilise their diplomatic and military power against what they come to see as a common enemy.

Henry Kissinger - former US Secretary of State and the master of Realpolitik-oriented foreign policy - recognised how the balance-of-power games are won, and during the 1970s advanced a geo-strategy that aimed at driving a wedge between Washington's two major international adversaries, the Soviet Union and Communist China.

Dr Kissinger and his boss, President Richard Nixon, embraced a policy of improving ties with both Moscow (through diplomatic détente) and Beijing (through the opening to China). The result was that the leaders in Moscow and Beijing came to regard Washington as a reliable strategic player that could help both communist regimes counterbalance the threats that each posed to the other. Those diplomatic moves helped stabilise the international system and opened the road for a process that led to the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the integration of China into the global economy.