Russia and China are best friends – for the foreseeable future

Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Beijing was a rousing success, according to Russian and Chinese media.

That’s what they always say.

But what’s the reality? Are the Chinese and Russians really in a “no limits partnership” or is it a shotgun marriage that will last only until one is free to stab the other in the back?

A friend asked for my take, so here it is:

This is not good. Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s strategic interests align – and they both smell weakness and confusion. They’ll keep pushing – including using proxies Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and others. And they’ll light more fires as they go along, including  encouraging secessionists from New Caledonia to Yap to Guam.

And Russian and Chinese militaries have been conducting joint training and exercises since the early 2000s and in earnest from the 2010s. They held combined naval and air operations near and around Japan, and farther afield in the South Atlantic, Baltic Sea, Mediterranean Sea, South China Sea, Indian Ocean and even near Alaska. And there are ground exercises in Siberia.

One suspects both leaders see a window of opportunity that they couldn’t have imagined four years ago and are aiming to seize the advantage over their enemies – America and its friends, in particular.

Yes, but …

Don’t the Russians have a visceral dislike of Chinese? Yes they do. But it doesn’t matter. Not right now, anyway.

Don’t the Chinese want to retake the territory they lost via conquest and unfair treaties to the Russians in past centuries? Yes, they do – and they think that, when the time comes, they’ll take it back.

For now it doesn’t matter. They’ll get it “when the time is right” – as they said in 1974, when Portugal offered to give back Macau but Beijing wanted to resolve the Hong Kong question first.