China-Russia Pipeline Deal Seals Trump's Eurasia Strategy Collapse

Putin may have been willing to wait longer had Trump not inadvertently catalyzed an incipient Sino-Indian rapprochement via his hypocritically punitive tariffs that aim to derail India's rise as a great power .

That spooked India into patching up ties with China, which alleviated their security dilemma that the US was exploiting to divide and rule them. This, in turn, reduced India's worries about closer Russian-Chinese energy cooperation that it previously feared could lead to Russia becoming a junior partner to Beijing.

While never officially articulated, astute observers and those who have spoken to Indian strategists know that New Delhi was concerned that China might leverage its influence over Russia to persuade it to curtail or halt military exports to India, thereby giving China a pivotal edge in their border dispute.

The Trump-induced Indo-US split and the attendant alleviation of the Sino-Indo security dilemma freed Russia to clinch the Power of Siberia 2 deal without fear of spooking India into the US' arms and thus dividing and ruling Eurasia.

The growing convergence between BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – both of which aim to gradually reform global governance and accelerate multipolarity via complementary efforts – is in no small part driven by India's embrace of both in response to new strategic threats from the US.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first visit to China in seven years to attend the SCO Leaders' Summit, during which he held a key bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping, is expected to usher in a new normal in Sino-Indian ties.

Although the root causes of Sino-Indian tensions remain unresolved, Russia now likely expects that they'll be better managed. This likely contributed to Moscow's timing in concluding the Power of Siberia 2 agreement with China, right as it became clear that the US would not help it with any of what it wants from Ukraine.

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Trump's apparent willingness to escalate US involvement in Ukraine, reportedly as a quid pro quo for a US-EU trade deal coupled with an improvement in Sino-Indo ties as Indo-US relations worsened, made the Power of Siberia 2 deal politically possible.

Trump's foreign policy in Eurasia has thus failed. His team's misguided approach towards Russia and India, by demanding too much from both, led them to work out their differences with China, both bilaterally and regarding their ties with the US.

That, in turn, has accelerated multipolar processes at the expense of unipolar US interests. The Rubicon has been crossed with the pipeline deal, and it remains to be seen how the US will respond.

This article was first published on Andrew Korybko's Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.

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