Marco Rubio Shares U.S. Strategy to Break Russia-China Alliance, Echoing Nixon’s Cold War Tactics

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Breitbart News that the Trump administration is working to weaken Russia’s ties with China, drawing a parallel to former President Richard Nixon’s efforts during the Cold War to pull China away from the Soviet Union.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever be successful completely at peeling them [Russia] off of a relationship with the Chinese,” Rubio said when asked if Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine were similar to Nixon’s approach. “I also don’t think having China and Russia at each other’s neck is good for global stability because they’re both nuclear powers, but I do think we’re in a situation now where the Russians have become increasingly dependent on the Chinese, and that’s not a good outcome either if you think about it.”

Rubio emphasized that U.S.-China relations will shape the 21st century and argued that it would be in both American and Russian interests for Moscow to avoid becoming a “junior partner” to Beijing.

“If Russia becomes a permanent junior partner to China in the long term, now you’re talking about two nuclear powers aligned against the United States,” he said.

“Even ten years from now or five years from now, if this trend continues, we could find ourselves in a situation where whether Russia wants to improve its relations with the U.S. or not, they can’t because they’ve become completely dependent on the Chinese because we have cut them off. I don’t know if that’s a good outcome for us.”

Rubio argued that the U.S. must maintain relationships with both Russia and China while recognizing the need for strategic competition. “We’re going to have disagreements with the Russians, but we have to have a relationship with both,” he said. “These are big, powerful countries with nuclear stockpiles. They can project power globally. I think we have lost the concept of maturity and sanity in diplomatic relations.”

Rubio’s first foreign trip as Secretary of State was to Panama, where he persuaded the government to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which he described as a tool of economic coercion. Panama’s participation in the initiative, he argued, posed a risk to U.S. commerce, particularly concerning the Panama Canal.

Rubio also addressed his recent meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, linking it to broader U.S. energy interests. “At that meeting, you had the three largest oil producers in the world — the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia — meeting, and we talk about energy and how important energy is to the future,” he said. “I think under President Trump, what you’re going to have is a foreign policy of strength, a foreign policy that rewards our friends and makes it costly to be America’s enemy.”

Earlier, on February 26, the United States and Russia discussed potential economic cooperation in the Arctic, including resource exploration and new trade routes.