Clarity is beginning to form around US President Donald Trump’s plans for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, with his administration appearing to accept some of the Kremlin’s key demands that Ukraine should not join NATO or return to its pre-2014 sovereign borders.
Amid the dust of what looks to be Trump’s blowing up of the previous US position on peace, another administration priority is also coming into focus: an attention shift away from Europe and toward China.
Speaking at a meeting in Brussels Wednesday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”
One focus needed to be US border security, he told counterparts gathering to discuss Ukrainian security – another was Beijing.
“We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific,” Hegseth said. “The US is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail.”
Beijing is no doubt paying close attention to Hegseth’s pronouncement, which comes as the US earlier this month ramped up its economic competition with China, launching a blanket 10% tariff on all Chinese imports, with the potential of more to come.
China has welcomed what had been an unexpectedly warm start to the second round of a Trump administration, with the US leader repeatedly expressing positive views about Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the potential for cooperation between the two.
Officials in Beijing had also likely been hoping that Trump’s upending of US foreign policy would weaken American alliances in Asia. China has bristled at a tightening of relationships between the US and partners such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines under former President Joe Biden.
Now, it’s clear they’ll be watching closely how the US may adjust its posture and its focus in a region where Beijing hopes to expand its influence and assert its claims over the South China Sea and the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan.
They’re also likely to have another pressing concern: whether Trump’s overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin will pull Moscow – a critical ally for Xi in his rivalry with the West – away from Beijing and toward Washington.
Xi and Putin memorably declared a “no limits” partnership days before Russian tanks rolled over the border to Ukraine. The two have continued to tighten ties during the war, with China emerging as a key economic lifeline for Russia, including through the provision of dual-use goods that NATO leaders said were powering Russia’s defense industrial complex. Beijing has defended that as normal trade.
The relationship has long been predicated on the two leaders’ shared disdain for NATO and US alliances more broadly. Putin and Xi have worked in tandem to build out non-Western international groupings, while ramping up joint military drills and supporting one another in forums like the United Nations.
That means a warming of Putin’s ties with Washington could have a far-reaching impact on China’s ability to push back against pressure from the US and advance Xi’s vision for an alternative to an America-led world order.