this is an active combat vessel in the mexican navy:

the reason that trump has been keen on the russians is because - and he's right. i said it myself. - he realizes that the west needs russia in a fight against china. we will lose a war against china if we can't pull the russians back into our orbit, first.

trump is, however, dealing with realizing the unpleasant reality that putin is an asshole and any realignment has to deal with that fact, first, as a pre-requisite.

so, he's dusting off biden's plan, which was to arm the arabs, instead. right. when was the last time the arabs won a war against anybody? if china invades the middle east, they may have to deal with endless arab bombing attacks, but that is not the same thing as fighting a war, and the chinese can avoid the annoyance by not invading. the arabs lucked out on oil wealth, and spend trillions on weapons, but they don't know how to use them. they buy these 100 million dollar planes from lockheed martin and then pay american pilots to fly them. there are american military bases all over the middle east with defensive weapons systems and american military guys operating them. do you think these countries are going to fight for democracy and human rights when they have to? the middle east is a liability to defend, it's not an ally to align with.

where should america align, then?

well, who has defeated the chinese before?

1) japan.

2) vietnam.

3) mongolia.

4) china, itself.

all of these are self contained to the chinese geographic space except mongolia. the last time that chinese siege technology took on arab fundamentalism, the result was 100 million dead muslims. i see no reason to think the same thing won't happen again. 

only the russians actually beat the mongols, although other slavic groups (poles, ukrainians) also fought them off.

the geography determines the destiny and there's not any other possible outcome. yes, you protect the pacific. yes, you try to control indochina. does this stuff sound familiar?

but, at the end of it, we need the russians fighting on our side, or the chinese march straight through to france. there's no other way to parse it.