Why Did U.S. Prioritize Containing Russia Over China?

It seems as though America’s grand strategic calculus was that it would be much easier to do the first at this moment in time than the second, since the relevant leverage had already been established in Europe—unlike in Asia, where the U.S. hasn’t been advancing this aim for the past three decades but only the past few years. Furthermore, the U.S. might have considered Russia to be weaker than China and thus more susceptible to pressure, not militarily, but economically and technologically. If that was the case like the author argues, containing Russia might have been thought to be a prerequisite towards ultimately containing China. To explain, the U.S. successful containment of the first and perhaps even its ultimate “Balkanization” upon placing it in a perpetual position of (likely WMD) blackmail would greatly impact on the national security of the People’s Republic, which is largely dependent on a stable and friendly Russia along its northern borders. Destabilizing, weakening, and possibly even breaking up Russia in the long term would instantly jeopardize China’s national security. Additionally, containing Russia entails less immediate economic, financial, supply chain, and technological blowback for the West than doing the same against China due to the complex economic interdependence that characterizes Western-Chinese relations. Russia was never really all that integrated into the global economy, apart from serving as Europe’s chief energy supplier so the U.S. might have wagered that it would be less costly to pressure its junior partners to “decouple” from it. Moreover, the economic consequences that this might trigger for Europe could be exploited by the U.S. With unexpected commitments to their people related to subsidizing skyrocketing energy costs and providing other forms of support in the midst of an intensified economic crisis caused by “decoupling” from their mutually beneficial energy relations with Russia, the U.S. could swiftly move to entrench its military-strategic influence over those countries since they couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket to “contain” Russia in response to the artificially manufactured “Russian threat”. Its companies could also buy out some of their competitors on the cheap in certain scenarios as well as sell more LNG too. All of this suggests that the U.S. prioritized containing Russia over China because: this scenario was already proceeding apace for the last three decades; the military-strategic infrastructure was largely in place; the costs of “decoupling” from Russia are much less than “decoupling” from China; the U.S. needed to galvanize transatlantic solidarity through NATO under an anti-Russian pretext; and comprehensively weakening Russia is regarded as the perquisite to successfully containing China sometime in the future. From these observations, the author hopes to inspire further research into the US’ grand strategic goals.