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There was a Tom Clancy novel in this vein The Bear and the Dragon. One of the later Jack Ryan novels where he becomes president and his best buddy becomes vice president. A pseudo-Putin ex-kgb Russian president discovers major resources in the far east of Russia, an expansionist Chicomm government looking for resources and lebensraum* invades Russia, the US steps in and kicks the piss out of the Chinese invasion force on livestream using drones**, the Chicomms in desperation launches ICBMs at Washington, which an Aegis destroyer shoots down with President Ryan personally on deck***. In the aftermath of the failed invasion and stalled nuclear attack, the Chinese government falls to a group of student protestors angered by watching the Chinese army get wrecked on livestream.
The "natural" alliance theory of Russia and the United States relies on the idea of creating an other who they both hate more. This idea comes up every few decades, often with a different boogeyman. The USA and the USSR were natural allies against the Nazis. They were natural allies against international Islamic terrorism. They are natural allies against China. They are natural allies in the face of alien invasion. Etc.
One can see the outline of the logic. Both are frontier peoples, the Americans went west and the Russians east. They each have vast hinterlands of natural resources existing alongside urbanized industrial and post-industrial cores. Once you create an evil anti-western-civilization threat, they both look pretty similar by comparison. It normally involves a hopeful projection that Russians want to embrace American values, and I suppose that when the same theory is offered in Russia they project Russian values onto the American people.
The irony of the novel two decades on is of course that it was both very prescient, we really have seen the invading expansionist army of a declining power shredded live on the internet; and very wrong, it was Putin's army that was embarrassed on livestream and it has had no discernible negative impact on his hold on domestic power. The people did not, in fact, rise up after watching a promised easy victory over a declining neighbor devolve into sci-fi murderbots wiping out a generation of men. And while there may be a rapprochement between the current American and Russian presidents, it doesn't represent a personal bond between two noble ex-intelligence operators seeking to bring Russia into the liberal Capitalist future, but a friendship between two regressive oligarchies who admire each other's efforts at kleptocracy.
*Seeking to save their economy after President Ryan implements trade sanctions (due to a controversy over a forced abortion and a murdered Catholic bishop, this was at the height of the One Child policy, and there was a broad right-wing fear of the ruthless forced abortion population reduction policy. This has, of course, entirely flipped, it's almost impossible to imagine the Chinese forcibly murdering babies in the name of population control today.
**There's also a subplot where a pseudo Vasily Zaitsev old man in the mountains WWII vet snipes the Chicomm commanding general
***After President Ryan personally allows soldiers on duty to smoke cigarettes, improving morale and productivity. It's an excellent 1000 pages of Tom Clancy stuff.
That book broke the brains of both Reddit and the entire national security establishment, and it’s why they threw out Kissinger’s dire prophecy in favor of video game logic.
I really doubt tBatD was that influential in the US foreign policy community. There was a lot of irrational optimism about a US-Russian rapprochement at the time, but the book was arguably a product of that.
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To be honest, I wasn't sure anyone other than me ever read that book. Was it really popular in any way?
It’s a pretty obscure book, but I notice that there’s this unfortunate tendency for analysts to just kind of assume that China is eventually going to try and gobble up Russia, and it makes them overlook the numerous things driving Russia and China together.
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Come on. Tom Clancy was massively popular back then.
Sure, but he also wrote a lot of books. I suppose I meant more that I didn't think anyone else on this forum would have read and remembered it offhand.
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Apparently it was also popular with all of the Reddit users during the year 2000, burgeoning cultural juggernaut Reddit was then.
I didn't even know it existed back then
It very much did not, I was, as you might say, "taking the piss" it didn't start until 2005
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