Yeah, would have been really useful for the US to at least convince China's northern neighbor to constantly do mobilization exercises [1] on their shared border to keep the PLA off-balance and draw combat power away from important theaters. Instead, we've pissed away the Sino-Soviet Split and enabled Eurasia to operate with secure interior lines. This can be chalked up entirely to really arrogant and foolish neocon decision-making with regards to Russia 2003-2007.

[1] https://www.chathamhouse.org/2018/09/russias-vostok-exercise...