Ruto's shift towards China reveals costly miscalculation on US ties

The world is changing due to unstoppable forces and forceful men in power who are determined to change the world to their liking.

There is China’s Xi Jinping, a grand strategist pushing China’s global agenda by appearing to be agreeable to almost every country.

Since all people share the same destiny, he argues, they should cooperate in multi-polar settings.

Vladimir Putin in Moscow, seemingly set to pull Russia from its post-Cold War humiliation and broken promises, wants Russia to regain its big power pride.

Probably with the advice of Alexander Dugin, Putin would like Russian influence felt in Eurasia, stretching from parts of Eastern Europe to Asia; he would let the US worry about the geographical West.

America has returned Donald Trump, who is seemingly out to shock the world into complying with his desires. As a result, Western Europe is confused as to how to relate with the United States.

To compound the matter, Trump has declared interest in grabbing Greenland from Denmark and turning Canada into the 51st state of the US.

From Kenya, President William Ruto struggles to be accepted as a big-time player on the world stage. His claim that he is reorganising the world, along with China’s Xi seemingly downgrades the West; that downgrading did not sit well with Washington.

Although Ruto and Trump should be compatible because they share certain attributes, they probably cannot.

Play equal

Each loves business dealings. Each relishes being a one-man wrecking crew, dismantling existing institutions and mounting grandiose projects for either the White House in Washington DC or the State House in Nairobi.

Each has such a big ego that he repeatedly boasts of his supposed achievements, more than any other leader before him.

The obstacle to the two getting along would be the inability of both men to subordinate their egos to the other. Instead of playing a Jair Bolsonaro to Trump the way the former Brazilian president did, Ruto would like to play equal to Trump the way he plays equal to Emmanuel Macron of France.

His ego, therefore, is likely to clash with that of Trump the way Elon Musk’s ego clashed with Trump’s and Musk was shown the door.

Since Ruto’s speech in Peking implied that Kenya and China had virtually relegated the United States to second place, Trump’s ego would probably not tolerate such relegation.

Other problems hinder Ruto from entrenching himself in the Trump camp. Biden had praised and given Ruto a White House treat in May 2024 as reward for sending Kenyan police officers to Haiti at US behest.

Another reward was the designation of Kenya as a Major Non-Nato Ally, MNNA. U.S. presidents, as of 1987, are allowed to award countries the MNNA designation.

In July 2019, for instance, when Brazilian President Bolsonaro visited the White House, Trump awarded Brazil the MNNA.

Bolsonaro had portrayed himself as a Brazilian Trump in Latin America. Ruto, though similar to Trump, has not designated himself an African version of Trump.

In his desire to show world leadership skills, Ruto makes strategic mistakes. He tends to miss the big picture as he displays ignorance in geopolitical dynamics partly because he dislikes history and the humanities. On his inauguration day, after a visit from Morocco’s foreign minister, he displayed naiveté by going against the AU position on Western Sahara.

He was quick to sound like the French on the political developments in West Africa. He loved interacting with Macron who let him have a public rally in Paris.

On the crisis in Congo while seeking AU chairmanship for Raila Odinga, he shockingly announced that he had consulted Macron on the challenges facing Congo; his candidate lost.

In Sudan, he ended up siding with UAE supported RSF which undermined his wish to be an IGAD mediator. Ruto, with Kenya as a MNNA, seemingly ignored American concerns over China’s challenge to American global dominance.

Real American danger

Despite warnings from various academics, American officials tended to be obsessed with Russia instead of paying attention to China’s rise as a global power. John Mearsheimer of the University Chicago warned that China, not Russia, was the real threat to American power.

Harvard’s Graham T Allison attracted attention with his Thucydides Trap argument that the US, as a dominant power, was destined for war with China as a rising power. Although China’s Xi Jinping dismissed the argument, it seemingly resonated with Trump as he prepared to recapture the White House and discard anything Biden. The danger to America, Trump seemed to believe, was more China than Russia.

That sense of danger as coming from China also informed the incoming Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Senator James Risch of Idaho.

On being elected chairman, Risch singled out China as presenting “the most significant long term risk to the United States … [China] steals American intellectual property and exploits our capitalist markets for their own gain, all while aggressively undermining American national security and expanding their military to rival our own.”

He identified Russia, China and Iran as among “hostile foreign powers across the globe … working together in an authoritarian axis to weaken the United States and harm our interests.

Yet, in the face of this growing danger, our government has been focused on advancing woke DEI programmes than protecting American people, defending democracy and restoring order in the world.”

He would essentially reverse Biden’s “woke DEI programmes” in order to “correct the shortcomings of the previous administration.”

Among Biden’s friends to be put under new American focus was Kenya’s Ruto who played right into the new US strategy of correcting Biden’s shortcomings.

Risch has seemingly taken a lot of interest in Kenya and wanted to distance the US from appearing to be complicit to kidnappings of Kenyan youth and foreigners. Risch had, in 2024, led US Congress into terming the RSF of Sudan a genocidal outfit.

In February 2025, he accused Ruto of promoting genocide in Sudan’s civil war by legitimizing the RSF. The legitimizing, Risch asserted, “is an unthinkable attempt to obscure the truth and will not end the massacre.”  

The trigger for the American anger, however, was Ruto’s trip as an honoured guest of President Xi Jinping at the very time he should have been receiving US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also doubles as Trump’s national security advisor. Apart from official discussions about trade imbalance and the need for China to remove tariff barriers to Kenyan exports, China gave Ruto a special forum to expound on Kenya-Chinese relations. Ruto had, in his 2024 visit to the United States, hoped to address a joint session of Congress as an honoured guest but that was not possible.

In contrast, China arranged for him to address an audience at the University of Peking, China’s premier university where, in his enthusiasm to equate Kenya to China made the self-aggrandizing statements that Kenya and China were reshaping the world.

Although Ruto tried to counter the American anger by pointing out that all he had done was to discuss trade balancing with China, the argument was not convincing because trade was not a serious issue.

New world order

What actually aroused the wrath of the United States and led Risch to introduce an amendment to Kenya’s MNNA status was the implied challenge to American pre-eminence as the shaper of global geopolitics.

Besides asserting that “Kenya and China are not merely trade partners, we are co-architects of a new world order—one that is fair, inclusive and sustainable” Ruto had added that Kenya could “serve as a bridge between East and West, North and South, in an era of deepening geopolitical tensions.” 

If Kenya and China were the only ones deciding the fate of the world, as Ruto claimed, the United States is then a minor actor on the world stage

The statement thus privileges China and Kenya over the US led Conceptual West and relegates the West to geopolitical irrelevance. Risch was among the first to react to Ruto’s implied insult to the West.

He believed that Ruto’s statement was a pledge of allegiance to China rather than simple realignment. Ruto had joined what Risch termed an anti-American “authoritarian axis”.

In calling for review of Kenya’s MNNA status, Risch task is to convince other senators and congressmen to punish Kenya. He did not confine himself to Ruto’s insulting sentences.

He wanted a thorough review of Kenya’s domestic and foreign policies as they affect American interests, US policy on Kenya including trade and security ties, Kenya’s support for rebel groups in Congo and Sudan, and Kenya’s abuse of human rights and abductions.

He wanted the review to pay special attention to Kenya’s relations with the ‘authoritarian axis’ comprising China, Russia, and Iran. It is not clear as to whether the Trump White House shares Risch’s views on Kenya as paying allegiance to China.

Ruto’s claim to being a co-architect of a new world order was daringly bold. It shocked the US Senate into reviewing Kenya’s MNNA status and the review would probably affect Kenya adversely.

Since both Trump and Ruto are experienced dealers, however, Trump might ignore Ruto’s Beijing statement. China was probably amused because Xi, along with the assertive Trump and Putin, are the architects of that new world order; they can tolerate Ruto being a loud joyrider in global geopolitics.