American regime is split into two camps right now: the anti-Russia camp and the anti-China camp. Whether you're Democrat or Republican doesn't matter, both parties have each. They both don't like Russia and China, but have differing opinions on which is the bigger evil.
The anti-Russian camp wants the Ukraine war to go on indefinitely and put the China threat on the back burner. Problem is this will allow China to continue growing as an economic and military power. If the Ukraine war goes on for 4-5 years and costs NATO trillions of dollars in resources and equipment they will be in an even worse position vis a vis China compared to today.
The anti-China camp wants a shift in focus from the Ukraine war so attention can be diverted back onto China. The anti-Russians don't want this as they know if the funding and weapons to Ukraine is cut off it'll be the end for the Ukraine and Putin would have achieved a massive victory.
They were all mostly anti-China until the Ukraine war kicked off, then they converted into anti-Russian overnight. There's been a gradual shift towards the anti-China camp.
Lindsey Graham is one of it's biggest supporters. Also that crazy British Liz Truss, who gave a batshit crazy speech in Tokyo on friday.
I'm convinced the recent "China spy balloon" episode was a coup attempt by the anti-China faction to shift attention away from Russia towards China.
I don’t think there was much of an anti-Russian camp left in the US before the Ukraine war, the Ukraine war wasn’t meant to shift focus from China to Russia, rather it was meant to destroy the Russian military, collapse the Russian economy and ultimately regime change Russia to free up Europe to come join the US military misadventure in Asia.
The US doesn’t want to fight China alone, but it cannot really get NATO to do much of value in the pacific when the lion share of their (already limited and stretched) military might are needed in Europe to guard against the dreaded Russian bear.
Ukraine was meant to allow NATO to swiftly de-fang the bear at a minimum, with a hope that they could slay Putin and put in a pro-western puppet in his place so they can at one stroke deprive China access to Russia’s vast natural resources and also create a new threat to China’s rear.
US military strategic thinking is still heavily influenced by Mackinder’s world island, and the fear of their rival(s) coming to dominate the Eurasia world island, as that would basically be checkmate for the US, cut off from the bulk of the world’s resources.
It’s ironic but little surprise that American heavy handed blundering attempts at grand chess moves on the world geopolitical board has done more to engineer their greatest fear than Xi and Putin could ever have expected to achieve between themselves alone. Because the only thing the US-led sanctions regime managed to conclusively achieve was the near eradication of Putin’s worst domestic rivals and enemies by stripping them of their wealth and source of power previously safely stashed away in US and EU bank accounts.