Vivek Ramaswamy has articulated a number of incoherent foreign policy positions; it is hardly worth bothering to analyze them, or even to take them seriously. He is a first-rate snake oil salesman and likely doesn't believe a word he's saying.
Nevertheless, one recent talking point strikes me as particularly odd: his notion that we should aim to "disband the Russia-China military alliance," and should make this our primary goal in Ukraine. He thinks we should offer Putin territorial concessions in exchange for "disbanding" this "alliance."
I can't make out what he means. In the first place, this reputed military alliance does not exist. Russia and China are not engaged in any military alliance worth the name. China has not provided any lethal support. It has offered all kinds of other help, providing semiconductors, helping Russia evade petroleum sanctions, and even sending trucks and drones—some of which play important military roles in artillery spotting or intelligence gathering. Of course all these items are sold, not donated. But this kind of intensified trade hardly counts as a "military alliance."
Now it doesn't follow that Russia and China could never enter a military alliance. If Russia truly begins to falter, Putin may feel forced to accept lethal aid, and China may be happy to provide it, viewing it as a source of leverage over Moscow. But China and Russia have a long, tense history, and Xi seems generally dissatisfied with Putin's recklessness (or at least his lack of success in Ukraine). They aren't true partners.
Besides, not only may Putin require a bailout in Ukraine, his military offers China practically nothing in return. Russia could send some artillery shells if a Chinese invasion of Taiwan went off the rails. It could backfill some old tanks. . . but it can't replace a J-20, or a Chinese frigate, or a good cruise missile. It can't provide advanced electronics. Maybe it could send suicide drones, thanks to the new partnership with Iran, but China can figure out how to make those easily. In other words, it's not a serious threat.
So Vivek has diagnosed a largely non-existent problem. But I'm also not sure how we would benefit from solving this nonexistent problem.
Perhaps he's going for the pre-invasion realist dream of reversing the Kissingerian rebalancing of the 1970s to align with Russia against China, as the new dominant threat. He hasn't actually said that, but it would imbue his plan with a certain semblance of logic.
Unfortunately for Ramaswamy, such an attempted balancing is not only a moral outrage unworthy of the character of the American people, it's also pointless. Russia sends China cheap oil—but otherwise benefits its big brother far less than we tend to think. Consider the numerical disparity between the two nations. China has almost exactly ten times the population (and the looming demographic crisis makes no difference, Russia has demographic problems of its own). It has nearly ten times the GDP, and thus practically the same GDP per capita, too. This is like the difference in population between America and Poland, or the difference in GDP between America and Italy. Imagine using Poland or Italy to balance against the United States—and Poland, at least, has a strategic location that the US needs, while Beijing has absolutely no reason to station troops in Russia. Influence over Central Asia is important, but China is rapidly supplanting Russia there anyway.
Nor is there any real military benefit to such a rebalancing. As explained above, the Russian military can’t help China in the first place, so it cannot seriously threaten China, either. Nor will China suffer through the removal of a nonexistent military ally.
Now that realization should also dampen the hopes of those who seek to weaken China by weakening Russia. If China somehow does get sucked into Ukraine, it may suffer, and a total Russian collapse (which is, I have previously argued, a goal or at least a possibility we must seriously consider) is certainly dangerous for China. But that merely means that any such alliance that does arise will indeed weaken China, and so benefit the US, while offering Beijing nothing in return. We don’t gain anything by breaking the two apart, but might gain by pushing them together. If China remains aloof, though, victory for Ukraine won't have such a powerful effect on Beijing. We ought to pursue that victory for its own sake.
But there's no China-Russia "military alliance," and breaking it apart will do no good anyway. The two nations are simply not in the same category—and Putin is not a reliable partner for anyone.