US fallacy of pitting Russia against China

Ever since the end of the Cold War, the pundits and policymakers in Washington have suffered from raging attention deficit disorder. New fads and fantasies have succeeded each other in dizzying and disorienting succession. We have lived through the "eternal triumph of democracy and the completion of the Hegelian engine to generate world ideas" (Francis Fukuyama), the "unipolar moment" (Charles Krauthammer), the "flat world" (Thomas Friedman), and "nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan" (George W. Bush and company).

Now, we are being inflicted with an old idea: divide and rule.

Washington pundits have decided it is time to "peel" Russia away from China and play the two great superpowers of Eurasia off against each other.