{"id":671,"date":"2026-02-22T12:01:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/?p=671"},"modified":"2026-02-22T12:02:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:02:37","slug":"trump-2-0s-grand-strategy-against-china-is-slowly-but-surely-coming-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/2026\/02\/22\/trump-2-0s-grand-strategy-against-china-is-slowly-but-surely-coming-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump 2.0\u2019s Grand Strategy Against China Is Slowly But Surely Coming Together"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Casual observers are convinced that Trump is a madman with no method behind his madness, but the reality is that he and his team \u2013 collectively known as Trump 2.0 \u2013 are slowly but surely implementing their grand strategy against China. Every one of their moves abroad should be seen as a means to this end. They want to comprehensively contain China and then coerce it into a lopsided trade deal that \u201crebalance[s] China\u2019s economy toward household consumption\u201d per the National Security Strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump 2.0 doesn\u2019t want to go to war over this, however, which is why they\u2019re careful to avoid replicating the Imperial Japanese precedent<\/a>. Piling too much economic-structural pressure on China at once could spook it into lashing out in desperation before the window of opportunity closes. They therefore decided to gradually deprive China of access to markets and resources<\/a>, ideally through a series of trade deals, in order to imbue the US with the indirect leverage required to peacefully derail China\u2019s superpower rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US\u2019 trade deals with the EU<\/a> and India<\/a> could ultimately result in them curtailing China\u2019s access to their markets under pain of punitive tariffs if they refuse. In parallel, the US\u2019 special operation<\/a> in Venezuela, pressure against Iran<\/a>, and simultaneous attempts to subordinate Nigeria and other leading energy producers could curtail China\u2019s access<\/a> to the resources required for fueling its superpower rise. The combined effect thus far is already placing immense pressure upon China to cut a deal with the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the grand strategic context within which Russia\u2019s talks with the US and Ukraine<\/a> are taking place. It too is coming under immense pressure after Trump 2.0 unexpectedly (from their view) perpetuated the proxy war in Ukraine, pioneered a breakthrough to Central Asia through last August\u2019s \u201cTrump Route for International Peace and Prosperity<\/a>\u201d across the South Caucasus<\/a>, and got India to curtail its oil imports<\/a>. Russia must now decide whether to cut its own deal with the US<\/a> or become more dependent on China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first scenario could include a resource-centric strategic partnership with the US in exchange for compromising on its maximalist goals in Ukraine, which could deprive China of access to the deposits that the US invests in as explained here<\/a>. As for the second scenario, Russia could continue its special<\/a> operation<\/a> indefinitely with growing Chinese support in exchange for China receiving unrestricted access to its resources at bargain-basement prices, thus greatly helping China prepare for war with the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Framed in this way, reaching a deal with Russia could facilitate China\u2019s strategic surrender to the US without spiking the risk of war, while failing to do so could spike the risk of war if Russia turns itself into China\u2019s raw materials reserve for the aforesaid reason and with the same outcome vis-\u00e0-vis the US. This imbues Putin with leverage vis-\u00e0-vis Trump 2.0, but they\u2019re also not desperate to reach a deal with Putin at any cost, ergo why they haven\u2019t coerced Zelensky<\/a> into his demanded concessions and might never.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Trump 2.0 can\u2019t cut a deal with Putin, then they\u2019ll prepare for war with China, which their National Defense Strategy<\/a> envisages given its explicitly declared World War-like military build-up. Be that as it may, replicating the Imperial Japanese precedent in that case dangerously risks a 21st<\/sup>-century Pearl Harbor, thus imperiling their planned restoration of unipolarity<\/a>. It\u2019s therefore better for Trump 2.0 to coerce Zelensky into giving Putin what he wants in order to continue peacefully containing China instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was originally published on\u00a0Andre Korybko<\/a>\u2018s Substack account and is republished with the author\u2019s permission.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy or official position of The Silk News.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Casual observers are convinced that Trump is a madman with no method behind his madness, but the reality<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,75,242,85,77,79,244,68,151,243,150,147],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion-analysis","tag-china","tag-india","tag-national-defense-strategy","tag-oil","tag-russia","tag-strategy","tag-tariff-war","tag-trade","tag-trump","tag-ukraine","tag-us","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":674,"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions\/674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesilknews.com\/en\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}