When Donald Trump said during his first presidential campaign that the United States “should get along with Russia,” many dismissed the remark as naive or dangerous. The conventional Washington view long treated Russia as a geopolitical adversary rather than a partner. Yet Trump repeatedly reiterated that the United States and Russia should cooperate where interests align, that China — not Russia — is America’s principal long-term rival, and that the coming era would be shaped more by shifting geostrategic alignments than by ideological struggle.
Those positions were not casual contrarian statements. They mirror a prediction made nearly half a century earlier by futurist Lawrence (Larry) Taub (1936–2018). In a macrohistorical model he began developing in 1976, Taub forecast that the United States and Russia would eventually gravitate toward a strategic northern partnership he labeled “Polario.”
Taub’s argument depended less on ideology than on structural forces: geography, resource distribution, the rise of East Asia, shifting supply lines and a shared frontier mentality between two continental superpowers. As the Arctic opens, shipping routes change and China grows more influential, Taub’s Polario frame offers a useful lens for interpreting Trump’s instincts about Russia and broader 21st-century realignment.
Frontier cultures and shared patterns
Taub emphasized long cycles and civilizational patterns over episodic politics. He portrayed both the U.S. and Russia as frontier societies — the American cowboy and the Russian Cossack archetypes — shaped by expansion, improvisation, resource exploitation and large, sparsely settled territories. Those cultural affinities do not erase political differences, but they create comparable strategic temperaments: restless, territorial and resource-focused.
Under Taub’s logic, such affinities make a strategic partnership plausible when global conditions change. New resource access, altered trade routes and mutual concerns about a rising East Asia could draw the two northern powers together as surely as Cold War ideology once pushed them apart. Taub echoed Tocqueville’s 19th-century observation that both nations emerged from relative obscurity to shape vast lands and project influence differently than smaller European states.
Nixon’s influence and post-Soviet policy choices
Trump’s emphasis on China as the primary long-term competitor revives a geopolitical line first pursued by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s: prevent a durable Moscow-Beijing axis. Nixon’s opening to China was meant to keep Eurasia divided rather than unified under one rival power.
After the Soviet collapse, many U.S. policymakers assumed a weakened Russia could not be a pivoting power. Western policies such as NATO enlargement deepened Europe’s integration with the West but also contributed to Russian estrangement from Eurasian arrangements — a decision with long-term strategic consequences.
Nationalism, deglobalization and domestic foundations
Another key Taubian theme is the resurgence of nationalism. Following decades of hyper-globalization — offshoring, deregulated capital flows and erosion of domestic industrial bases — many societies are reasserting borders, economic sovereignty and cultural identity. From “America First” to India’s industrial push and various authoritarian renewal programs, political fault lines now favor domestic consolidation over abstract global commitments.
Taub treated this reversal as a structural correction rather than mere reactionary politics. Globalization delivered efficiency but also hollowed manufacturing, widened inequalities and generated cultural dislocation. In this context, voters demand functioning institutions, jobs and coherent domestic purpose. Taub argued foreign policy follows domestic strength: a state that cannot sustain cohesion and economic resilience at home cannot credibly project power abroad. Trump’s focus on manufacturing, energy independence and transactional diplomacy reflected that orientation as much as his personal style.
BRICS, tactical coalitions and uncertain futures
Critics point to BRICS as evidence against any U.S.–Russia rapprochement. Taub would see BRICS as a tactical, convenience-driven coalition aimed at diluting Western dominance in finance and institutions rather than as a durable geopolitical bloc. Tactical alignments shift; historical examples show erstwhile enemies can become partners rapidly when strategic conditions change.
Whether Taub’s full Polario vision will materialize is unknowable. But the structural drivers he identified — geography, Arctic-accessible resources, changing supply chains and the long arc of East Asian development — could generate a gravitational pull between the United States and Russia under certain conditions. Trump’s instincts about prioritizing competition with China and seeking pragmatic ties with Russia echo that macrohistorical forecast.
The value of Taub’s model lies less in precise predictions than in highlighting long-term civilizational patterns that can reshape alliances. Strategic realignments are possible and often surprising; history shows alliances formed quickly when shared interests demanded it.
Jan Krikke is the editor of the new book A Futurist for the 21st Century: The Macrohistory of Lawrence Taub (1936–2018).
