As I suggested partially in another thread, you could trace this back to Snowden's defection and the current administration's (and Hillary's cabinet-term) treatment of the Russians over Ukraine and other issues. Of course, the Repubs are saying "they were weak." The Repubs need any kind of faux-argument or specious assertion because they've been desperate for a return to power, and they'll say anything -- and did say anything -- to get there.
Better yet -- trace it back to George Kennan's "white-paper" for the JCS laying out a strategic doctrine to wage Cold War. There were identifiable "periods" or eras. There was the Great Stalinist Scare and the McCarthy Era. With Khrushchev's succession and Stalin's death, and after the Korean Armistice, there was this lingering fear according to Kennan's view of reality of an International Communist Conspiracy -- a Monster Plot -- in which they were all "working together." Then, there was the Sino-Soviet Split in 1960, followed by American paranoids like counterintelligence chief James Angleton's Monster Plot theory that the split was "phony," [there were two KGBs, etc. etc.]
Given our history with Chennault, Vinegar-Joe Stilwell and China against the Japanese, the strategic doctrine would morph into an idea of driving a wedge between USSR and China. Nixon had no problem making overtures to the Chinese because the Chinese had a minimal involvement in Vietnam, for reasons going back hundreds of years.
So we come to this: with the Asshole President-Elect as somehow Putin's ever faithful apologist. Putin misses the Cold War, or what he and some Russians see as a golden era of Russian presence in the world. If Trump were a thinking person -- like Putin -- he would balance our trade relationship with China against a posture with the Russians. But he doesn't do that.
He doesn't do it because he's Putin's Little Bitch. Instead of just "renegotiating" our trade relations with China, Trump violates the long-standing policy over Taiwan -- which has been always an incidental but established diplomatic posture. It is as if he wants to do everything he can to damage US-China relations.
The West, the Russians and the Japanese have variously partitioned Asia in various ways, and Taiwan seems to fit that category. Howsoever this is supposed to play out, it had been stable.
I thank our Toronto forum member for posing the question. Please tell me though -- aren't there the same proportion of assholes to normal people in Canada as there are here? Because it seems to me we have the larger share. [Of course, if California has 3 million undocumented, and Hillary's count was 3 million over Asshole's, then she didn't really win the popular vote. Another Asshole argument.]