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…