It was an excellent achievement when Nixon and Kissinger took advantage of Beijing’s fears of the U.S.S.R. with the historic opening of China’s borders. That chess move created a strategic triangle, with the U.S. in a unique position, and turned ideology on its head, dividing the two Eastern communist regimes.
Now, amidst a startling attention deficit in the U.S., tensions with Russia are resulting in the U.S. getting the short end of the stick, with risky implications for the global order. Sino-Russian relations are closer than they have been at any time in the past five decades, giving them the chance to reshape the global order to their liking.