In the most recent Bulletin, I pointed to a surprising recent article by Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations, who reported that top Chinese officials, far from viewing Donald Trump as the dunce he seems to be, appear to regard him as some sort of strategic genius (though not necessarily a very stable one).

There’s a method to Trump’s madness, the Chinese believe, one geared mainly toward containing China’s geopolitical ascent. In their view, this logic even extends to the most apparently inexplicable aspect of his foreign policy: his coziness with Putin.