Many interpret President Trump’s Russia policy as one that can be rationalized based on a desire to isolate China. This interpretation leaves out too many reasons why this rationale is unfeasible.

In February, President Trump’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, sounded perhaps the clearest articulation since November 6, 2024 of an idea floating around Trump and his approach toward the war in Ukraine since Trump, as candidate, ratcheted up his rhetoric about ending the war. According to Kellogg, behind Trump’s new Russia policy lies the objective of removing Russia from the anti-American camp of allies in which it is currently a significant member, alongside China, Iran and North Korea, and realigning it with the U.S. By liquidating America’s conflict with Russia over Ukraine, this logic goes, Washington and Moscow could find greater common ground than at any time in the last two decades – paving the way for greater trust, reduced frictions, fewer causes for enmity and, eventually, diplomatic reordering of forces favoring America’s overall position.

There are several problems with the idea’s feasibility, as has been pointed out in recent days, when the policy itself – regardless of its motivations – became a reality through a rapidly evolving turn of events and decisions by the administration. What is no less important to note is that, through the last year, a period spanning the presidential campaign and the months since the election, that “strategic theme” rationalizing the policy has been largely absent from Trump’s and his advisors’ public argumentation in favor of their new Ukraine-Russia approach. This sheds doubts not only on the new policy’s potency from a strategic perspective, and its likely success to yield the expected dividends, but also on the fact that this strategic rationale truly plays a central role for Trump and his close associates.

Back, however, to the rationale itself. What is perhaps most striking about Kellogg’s argument, which has been attributed to the new Trump policy even when Trump himself was not pronouncing it, is the large number of unestablished assumptions that must be correct for that strategic formula to be at all relevant. These can be subdivided into two categories: assumptions about Russia, and assumptions about what fosters a real rapprochement in relations between states and what such rapprochement would actually mean.

The first and foremost element that has to be considered is whether Moscow’s long-term objectives in the international system are reconcilable with U.S. objectives. Even through the lenses of the more (but not entirely) isolationist vision promoted by Trump, the U.S. still has a desire to keep its great power role and status, which must be supported by some policies, modes of behavior and strategic assets that are antithetical to Russian objectives. To name a few: even if the U.S. under Trump seeks a greater role for Europe in providing for its own security, Washington would still have an interest in keeping Europe as an economically and politically liberal, friendly continent, as has been part of its global strategy since 1945. This runs counter to Russia’s ambitions at a basic, inherent level, as Russia seeks to increase its great power position and influence and define these goals, inter alia, in terms of undermining European states’ liberal domestic order.

Russia has for years been utilizing influence operations and other tactics to meddle in European societies and affect Europe’s political systems. Another example is Russia’s aspirations in the Middle East, which it historically views as a critical region of huge geopolitical importance, both for security, strategic, and symbolic reasons. Unlike Europe, this is a region from which Trump did not show any inclination of retrenching from. On the contrary, Trump has repeatedly addressed terrorism, Iran, and Hamas as key adversaries of the U.S. and its regional interests, implying greater U.S. involvement in tackling these issues, including his proposal regarding the Gaza Strip. It is hard to see how the U.S. and Russia could cooperate in the Middle East while Russia is supporting U.S. adversaries and aspires to a regional position and influence defined in zero-sum terms with other external forces.

Even more broadly, Russia’s current governmental elite views the U.S. as a long-term, systemic rival of Russia. This view is intertwined with resentment that goes back, in the case of Putin, to the collapse of the Soviet Union. As has been shown by several Russia specialists, such as Andrei Tsygankov, Russia tends to view the West and in particular the U.S. as its “significant other” against whose great power status and degree of advancement it measures and defines its own. Under such deep-seated perceptions, it is hard to see why, of all potential adversaries, the U.S. under Trump chooses to appease, placate, and theoretically realign with Russia. From a purely strategic perspective it’s unclear why Moscow was marked as the most appeasable adversary, and where comes from the assumption that Russia would not just pocket the gains from the Trump Bargain and continue its usual behaviors, perhaps including a renewed military advances in a few years’ time, executed from an improved strategic and great power position.

For real rapprochement to be possible, there should be mutual long-term interests uniting the parties, as well as relatively clean (or cleaned) slate of grievances which enables geopolitical trust to evolve. This has been the situation when Nixon went to China in 1972 and eventually realigned it. Not only that, China at the time was highly distrustful and ideologically disillusioned with the Soviets, its perceptions and objectives vis-à-vis the system and the U.S. were not inherently antithetical to Washington’s agendas. The main hurdle to overcome, beyond the basic ideological difference between the Chinese and American systems, has been America’s past support of the Nationalists in China’s civil war. All other imperatives, aided by bold and proficient diplomacy, were enablers of the rapprochement, not a hindrance.

Overall, it is hard to see how, beyond the war and Ukraine, and even if Trump decided to liquidate any U.S. interest in its outcome, Russia under its current leadership and the U.S. could find durable, mutually-beneficial common ground. The only way to achieve that would have been through a transformation of Russia’s entire geopolitical purview (and even that highly hypothetical scenario would only help to a limited degree under the present Russian leadership), and a deep change in the way Washington and Moscow perceive each other politically. If there’s any realistic way of achieving that within a foreseeable future, Trump’s policy of endless concessions to Russia and U.S. allies abandonment without a hint of reciprocity from Moscow to date, is not the way to achieve that.