President Donald Trump‘s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared on Fox News — his former employer — after Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in China with President Xi Jinping, who hosted a military parade. Or as Fox News described it, “a weapons showcase.”
When asked, “What kind of message are they trying to send, and what is the administration’s response?” Hegseth replied: “Well, unfortunately the previous administration has driven Russia and China closer together. That’s a terrible development of a lack of American leadership and a lack of American strength.”
Pete Hegseth: "Unfortunately, the weakness of the previous administration has driven Russia and China closer together. That's a terrible development of a lack of American leadership and a lack of American strength." pic.twitter.com/8umKPgFXGV
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 3, 2025
While every incoming presidential administration inherits the policy impacts of its predecessor, critics of the Trump administration are responding to Hegseth’s assignation of blame by pointing to several actions taken by the White House over the past eight months which, they assert, are more likely contributing factors to the growing closeness between Russia and China.
“Who would seriously disagree that it is [Trump’s] foolish, provocative antagonizing of friends and foes alike with his refurbished, multifaceted brand of neo-imperial US overreach that has induced so many countries to throw in their lot with China?” wrote The Guardian‘s veteran foreign affairs scribe Simon Tisdall.
U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), a major Trump critic, gives the President full credit for the shifts in geopolitical relations that Trump has ushered in since resuming office, claiming — as Trump himself claims — that Trump wholly owns the changes he’s wrought. “In 8 months,” Goldman writes, “Trump has effectively undone 80 years of American global leadership.”
As Trump shows his incompetence in foreign policy, we are losing our allies and pushing our enemies closer together.
— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) September 3, 2025
In 8 months, Trump has effectively undone 80 years of American global leadership.
We are much less safe under Trump. https://t.co/QZTx7nEQ6I
Former American Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, in his new book Autocrats vs. Democrats, also sees the Trump effect in America encouraging the Putin-Xi alliance. McFaul frames the power of the China-Russia partnership benefitting in large part from the increasing polarization of American society and the rise of far-right ideologues, encouraged and enabled by Trumpism, in the U.S. and throughout the West.
McFaul writes: “The alliance between the autocracies of China and Russia, the nature of the ideological struggle, China’s economic might, the rise of the far right in the United States and in Europe, and the growing isolationism and polarization in American society—taken together these represent new challenges for the democratic world.”
Commenters like Miami lawyer and journalist Fernando Boscardin responded to Hegseth’s Biden assertion by slamming Trump administration actions that he says demonstrate a perilous lack of foresight and an American surrender of what’s traditionally known as “soft power” — accruing good will globally through aid and support, often at relatively small expense.
Boscardin wrote: “The worldwide tariffs applied, the attacks on the main allies, the cut of USAID programs, and the interference in foreign governments are making most countries get closer, especially to China, to replace the market and the support they lost from the US. Or do you think the Chinese won’t occupy this vacuum by financing and partnering with those who are being kicked? This is politics and geopolitics. The real world is pragmatic. The result is lost leadership.”
Supporting Boscardin’s assertions, in February, the Council of Foreign Relations reported that “China has not only wasted little time touting the end of much U.S. foreign aid—USAID spent about $40 billion a year—but has also linked it to the overall U.S. global decline. It has also begun to identify places with potential projects in countries where USAID is now gone or all but gone.”
Another Trump critic responded to Hegseth’s Biden-blaming by writing: “India & China were literally fighting earlier this year and now BFFs.” (The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, was not in attendance at Xi’s military parade but he was in China on Monday to meet with Xi and Putin. Several U.S. national security experts say Trump’s tariffs on India are pushing India, historically an American ally, closer to China.)
[Historical note: Days before Putin sent thousands of troops into sovereign Ukrainian territory in February 2022, China and Russia declared a “no limits” strategic partnership. As Reuters reported in 2025, on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion, “Xi has met Putin over 40 times in the past decade” — with 40 meetings strongly suggesting that a durable Russia-China alliance preceded both Biden’s POTUS term and also Trump’s first term in office. Xi and Putin have called each other “dear” and “old” friends.
Explaining the Russia-China synergies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace cites “common authoritarian domestic policies; a common adversary, the United States; and complementary geopolitical priorities—Europe for Russia, Asia-Pacific for China—that reinforce each other in competition with the United States.”]
Hegseth also assessed the optics of the Chinese military parade: “Demonstrations of parades are fine but they don’t hopefully manifest in actual military conflict. We know what they believe, and what they’re about, we also know how strong we are, and the military advantages we have. They know that also.”
Note: Showing off weapons for the Russian president is not uncommon. In mid-August, when Trump welcomed Putin on U.S. soil in Alaska, he had the U.S. military fly F-22s fighter jets and a B-2 bomber overhead at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska.
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