As U.S.-Iran tensions show tentative signs of easing, a prominent Washington strategist is urging the Trump administration to confront an uncomfortable paradox at the heart of its foreign policy: the geopolitical pressure Washington applies to both Beijing and Moscow may be the single greatest driver pushing the two powers closer together.
Lyle Goldstein, Asia director at the think tank Defense Priorities and director of the China Initiative at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, told Storm Media this week that the gradual stabilization of the Middle East conflict creates a rare opening — one Washington should use to reset its approach to great-power competition before the window closes.
"It looks like we will soon see this wasteful, unnecessary, counterproductive, and unconstitutional Middle Eastern war come to an end," Goldstein wrote in an email to Storm Media. "America's great-power diplomacy urgently needs to move forward to ease global tensions this year."
The remarks carry weight given the fragility of the current moment. On June 25, Iranian forces struck the M/V Ever Lovely — a Singapore-flagged vessel operated by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine — with a drone attack. The U.S. launched retaliatory strikes the following day. Despite the flare-up, analysts say the broader trajectory points toward de-escalation, with international oil prices stabilizing and the conflict showing no sign of expanding into a wider regional war.
U.S. Pressure Is Deepening The Alliance Washington Wants To Prevent
Goldstein, who spent 20 years as a professor at the U.S. Naval War College before moving to his current roles, has devoted much of his recent research to the true nature of Sino-Russian ties. His assessment is more nuanced — and more self-critical of Washington — than most mainstream analysis.
He characterizes the current China-Russia relationship not as a full military alliance but as a "quasi-alliance": one that displays features of strategic partnership without reaching the depth of the treaty-based alliances the United States maintains with its partners. Crucially, he argues, both Moscow and Beijing are aware that a tightly militarized bloc would destabilize the global order — a constraint that has shown up repeatedly in their public statements and actual behavior.
But here is where Goldstein's argument cuts against Washington's own instincts. He contends that American foreign policy — particularly sustained geopolitical pressure over Ukraine and Taiwan — has been the primary force pushing China and Russia toward each other. "This cannot be denied," he told Storm Media. That pressure has deepened bilateral cooperation, heightened insecurity on all sides, and raised the risk of miscalculation.
The implication is uncomfortable: if Washington's goal is to prevent a deeper Sino-Russian alliance, its current approach may be achieving the opposite.
A "Dual Kissinger Strategy" — And Why It Is Harder Than It Sounds
To break the cycle, Goldstein points to a largely forgotten dimension of the Nixon era. Nixon's 1972 opening to China is well remembered as a masterstroke that reshaped the global balance of power. Less remembered, Goldstein notes, is that Henry Kissinger was simultaneously working to improve relations with Moscow that same year — leveraging the China opening to extract diplomatic concessions from the Kremlin. Those parallel efforts produced the SALT and ABM treaties, foundational agreements that anchored nuclear arms control and helped usher in a decade of reduced tensions.
Goldstein argues that Trump should pursue what he calls a "dual Kissinger strategy" — improving relations with both China and Russia at once, rather than confronting them simultaneously or attempting to peel one away from the other through a "reverse Kissinger" maneuver aimed at splitting the partnership.
It is a bold prescription. Whether the Trump administration — which has maintained significant pressure on Beijing over trade and technology while pursuing selective engagement with Moscow over Ukraine — has the political will or diplomatic coherence to pursue warmer ties with both major powers simultaneously is far from clear. The strategy also assumes a degree of receptiveness in Beijing and Moscow that current dynamics do not obviously support.
What Goldstein's argument does illuminate, however, is a real strategic bind: the harder Washington pushes, the closer together its two principal rivals may draw. That dynamic, more than any single policy decision, may define the shape of great-power competition in the years ahead. （Related： U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Renamed Back to Pacific Command — Scholars Warn of Trump Concession to China? ｜ Latest ）
