One of the most disappointing but recurrent claims and understandings to my mind of US President Donald Trump’s policies and rhetoric is that he’s ‘crazy’, out of control, a mad man. This is nowhere more the case than with his alleged friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This also fits well with the older claim of Russian interference in the 2016 and other presidential elections as well as the belief that Putin “has something” on Trump – some information that if released might damage or bring his presidency down.While individual leaders clearly have latitude and discretion, to a degree, to make their own decisions, such autonomy is always to be seen in the context of longer-term patterns, structures of power and the attitudes of other powerful political, military and intellectual elites. The Pentagon, for example, is not just a bureaucracy but a major actor or set of actors and a powerful source of constraints on any president.Seen this way, the Trump administration’s attitudes towards the Ukraine question look quite different – and as embedded in deeper long-term thinking and US grand strategy, Rather than the rantings and doings of a mad man.Though Trump’s recent description of Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries have been declared a “disgrace,” etc. and been read through the lens of his personality, such readings I argue miss the deeper continuity. Trump’s (seemingly) characteristic impulsiveness is actually better understood as a modern day version of a long-standing American strategy: to prevent the consolidation of a coherent Eurasian power bloc capable of challenging US primacy.In other words, Trump is not an outlier here but well within the mainstream methods and goals of US grand strategy.Look, for example, at the historic Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War. China and the Soviet Union clashed ideologically, had deadly border clashes in 1969, and competed over who should lead the communist bloc. This schism was exploited by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to great effect. Triangular diplomacy improved America’s position relative to both powers while driving a wedge between the communist rivals, which contributed to the eventual erosion of Soviet power.That episode remains a powerful memory, in fact a reflex, in the US foreign-policy establishment.Today, the equation is reversed. China is the rising power and Russia is the weaker, though still armed with devastating levels of nuclear weapons. The goal now is broadly either to split apart Russia and China or, more realistically, to limit the depth and breadth of their relationship. The US does not want a unified Eurasian challenge.Mackinder to Kennan to Brzezinski to TrumpTrump may not be an intellectual or deep thinker but he is not crazy nor an outlier. His multitude of advisers – and the thousands of national security experts on whom they rely – are well versed in world and US strategic history. Consequently, Trump’s actions are firmly anchored in a historic tradition that runs from Halford Mackinder’s ‘heartland’ theory through George Kennan’s ‘containment’ doctrine to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard. For Mackinder, the Eurasian landmass was “the world island” which ought never to be unified. American primacy has basically rested on that premise for decades.A consolidated Eurasia that unites Chinese industrial and technological might with Russian resources and strategic depth would create overland corridors into Europe and reduce China’s dependence on US-controlled sea lanes.This is why the current Russia-China “no-limits” partnership (since 2022), that features united opposition to Western sanctions, frightens the US. Beijing’s support has been vital in helping Moscow withstand economic pressure, and also absorb Western attention in Europe. This has enabled China to keep its focus on the Indo-Pacific.For Washington, a Eurasian system that is more or less out of its control would also be one that is less reliant on the dollar and less vulnerable to American maritime dominance, while offering alternative institutions and markets to the Global South.Hence, Republican realists, some Democratic strategists, and elite foreign policy think-tank networks that manage American hegemony have focused on Russia-China alignment. Many of them reject Trump’s methods and rhetoric but share the underlying diagnosis that simultaneous confrontation with both Moscow and Beijing is unsustainable.The debate in US strategic circles is less about the desirability of the strategy than it is about its feasibility. Given the absence of the deep mutual hostility between China and Russia that characterised the original Sino-Soviet relationship, America’s job is that much harder. It is also about the costs that any genuine rapprochement with Putin’s Moscow would impose on European allies.Trump’s rhetorical style makes the strategy disruptive to transatlantic amity. Yet the impulse behind the strategy is institutional. Controlling Ukrainian mineral resources, managing European energy dependence, and applying pressure on China are all part and parcel of the same Eurasian great game. A ceasefire that freezes the conflict on terms tolerable to Moscow is attractive because a prolonged Ukraine war will only drive Russia deeper into China’s arms while draining Western resources that would be best reserved for the Indo-Pacific.Whether such a reverse Sino-Soviet split can succeed is altogether another matter. The original Nixon opening worked mainly because of a pre-existing schism. Today, China and Russia resent US primacy, have complementary economic needs and share an interest in insulating themselves from Western power. But trying to prise them apart could backfire by accelerating their unity while fracturing the Western coalition. European leaders’ recent declarations of support for Ukraine reflect this tension. Their fear is that US prioritisation of China’s challenge could leave Europe alone to manage a weakened but still revisionist Russia.But the larger point remains. In a multipolar and increasingly multiplex world, the US wants to retain the capacity to set the terms of global order. Preventing the political, economic and military integration of Eurasia is central. Trump’s rhetoric is crude, often outrageous, but the strategic logic he is acting upon is neither new nor ‘crazy’. It has nothing to do with Putin himself or any ‘dirt’ the Russians may have on Trump.It is the logic of an imperial foreign policy and national security establishment still wedded to the defence of American hegemony against the possibility of any coherent alternative, especially a Eurasian alternative.Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and the associate dean of research, School of Policy and Global Affairs, City St George’s, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and writes the American Imperium column at The Wire. He is the author of several books including Foundations of the American Century and is currently writing a book on the history, politics and crises of the US foreign policy establishment.