Opinion | America Needs to Be Strategic About the War in Ukraine – The New York Times

At the same time, taming an interdependent world will require working across ideological lines. Washington should ease off on the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad and the Biden administration should refrain from its tendency to articulate a geopolitical vision that too neatly divides the world into democracies and autocracies. Strategic and economic expedience will at times push the United States to partner with repressive regimes; moderating oil prices, for example, may require collaboration with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Even though the United States will continue teaming up with its traditional democratic allies in Europe and Asia, many of the worlds democracies will avoid taking sides in a new era of East-West rivalry. Indeed, Brazil, India, Israel, South Africa and other democracies have been sitting on the fence when it comes to responding to Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Russia clearly poses the most immediate threat to geopolitical stability in Eurasia, but China, due to its emergence as a true competitor of the United States, still poses the greater geopolitical challenge in the longer term. Now that Russia and China are regularly teaming up, they could together constitute an opposing bloc far more formidable than its Soviet forebear. Accordingly, the United States should exploit opportunities to put distance between Moscow and Beijing, following the lead of the quintessential realists Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who in the 1970s weakened the Communist bloc by driving a wedge between China and the Soviet Union.

The United States should play both sides. Russias invasion of Ukraine marks a fundamental breach with the Atlantic democracies, yet the West cannot afford to completely turn its back on Russia; too much is at stake. As during the Cold War, Washington will need a hybrid strategy of containment and engagement. Russia should remain in the penalty box for now, with the United States pushing back against the Kremlins territorial expansionism and other aggressive behavior by reinforcing NATOs eastern flank and maintaining harsh economic sanctions.

But Washington should also remain on the lookout for opportunities to engage Moscow. Its invasion of Ukraine has just made Russia an economic and strategic dependent of China; Mr. Putin will not relish being Xi Jinpings sidekick. The United States should exploit the Kremlins discomfort with becoming Chinas junior partner by signaling that Russia has a Western option.

Assuming an eventual peace settlement in Ukraine that permits the scaling back of sanctions, the Western democracies should remain open to cautious and selective cooperation with Moscow. Areas of potential collaboration include furthering nuclear and conventional arms control, sharing best practices and technologies on alternatives to fossil fuels, and jointly developing rules of the road to govern military and economic activity in the Arctic.

Russia needs China more than China needs Russia, so Washington should also seek to pull Beijing away from Moscow. Beijings ambiguous response to the invasion of Ukraine suggests at least a measure of discomfort with the economic and geopolitical disruption that has been produced by Russian recklessness. Yet Beijing continues to benefit from Russian energy and strategic cooperation and from the fact that Mr. Putin is forcing the United States to focus on Europe, thereby stalling the U.S. pivot to Asia. Nonetheless, Washington should keep an eye out for opportunities to work with Beijing in areas of common interest trade, climate change, North Korea, digital governance, public health to improve relations, tackle global problems and potentially weaken the bond between China and Russia.

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Opinion | America Needs to Be Strategic About the War in Ukraine - The New York Times