Chapotraphouse

The largest ideological division within the ruling class is whether or not Russians are white. There are factions within Trump's orbit that see a potential ally against the rest of Asia and they're constantly jockying with the other factions which see Russia as too Asian.

Purge the liberal in your head

This is the result of a web of forces of varied nature pushing history in different directions at the same time. It feels the way you're describing because you're taking the end result and using it to look at the whole process in retrospect. Meanwhile, actual history followed the reverse course.

Instead of "these nations made a secret deal to destroy us," like libs tend to think and inevitably end up becoming racist genocidals, you'd get "these nations built themselves an advantageous position into the process of fuel production in the span of decades, and now they get generally positive results in most feasible attempts to redesign global fuel production"

but it also makes sense as rational actors all independently making rational decisions. Russia and China want less NATO in their backyards, Trump wants $5. sure, it's fun to assume Trump has secret spy shit going on with the KGB, and that Musk is an agent working for 国家安全部, and something something Mossad, but you know

"it's not my fault if someone awful is correct"

not that the libs are necessarily correct here, just that contrarianism is a rule of thumb at best

Hanlon's razor is applicable here:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."