Russia will be key as US sets tone for cold war with China

NEW DELHI: On the day US secretary of state Mike Pompeo asked the world to rise up against the “tyranny” of Chinese President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump dialled his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the inclusion of Beijing in future talks on strategic arms control, oil security, and Iran.

According to diplomats based in Washington and Moscow, this was President Trump’s fifth call to President Putin in the last two months, with the Russian Federation seen as key to reining in China in the long term at a time when geopolitics is undergoing a transformation.

While President Trump understands the importance of Russia in the Beijing equation, he faces stiff resistance from the Cold War lobby in Washington that still sees Moscow, and not China, as the US’S main adversary. President Trump’s conversation on Iran was to dissuade Putin from supporting Tehran, which wants to join hands with China to forge a long-term anti-us alliance.

Secretary of state Pompeo, on his part, virtually upended the 1970s Nixon-kissinger doctrine of engaging China on the belief that Beijing would eventually assimilate in the global comity of nations. The Nixon-kissinger engagement of China was at the cost of US relations with India, as Washington then held New Delhi responsible for the division of Pakistan in 1971 and moved the USS Enterprise in opposition to the move.

By saying that his army record during the Cold War taught him that Communists always lie, Pompeo made it clear that the new mantra with Beijing was “distrust and verify,” re-fitting to modern-day China President Ronald Regan’s “trust but verify” slogan vis-a-vis the Soviet Union through the 1980s.

“General Secretary Xi Jinping is not destined to tyrannise inside and outside of China forever, unless we allow it… maybe it is time for a new grouping of like-minded nations...,” Pompeo said.

While it is too soon for Pompeo’s

statement to be translated on the ground, China will be determined to ensure that President Trump does not return to power in November. Pompeo sounded like US diplomat George F Kennan, who sent an 8,000-word telegram to the US State Department in February 1946 -- the now famous “long telegram” -- where he articulated the US philosophy of “containment” to deal with the Soviet Union.

Pompeo said he wasn’t advocating containment because the challenge facing the US and the world from China was more complex. “The USSR was closed off from the free world. Communist China is already within our borders,” he said.

Pompeo also turned President Nixon’s statement that “world cannot be safe until China changes” on its head, saying that the world must change the Chinese Communist Party, or China will change the world -- as is happening in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

Following up on US national security adviser Richard O’ Brien, FBI director Chris Wray and attorney general William Barr’s caustic remarks on China, secretary Pompeo has set the agenda for the dawn of a new Cold War. The last one ended with the disintegration of the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1991. This time the enemy is China.

DIPLOMATS SAY THIS WAS US PRESIDENT TRUMP’S FIFTH CALL TO RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PUTIN IN THE LAST

TWO MONTHS