The one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting. I’m going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that,” Donald Trump boasted in an interview with the political commentator Tucker Carlson in October. On the campaign trail, the president-elect said repeatedly that he would stop the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours” and that he would be much tougher on China than President Joe Biden has been.