In 1946, when the heat of World War II was still simmering, George Kennan, the US ambassador to the USSR, sent a telegram to James Byrnes, the US Secretary of State. The 5,000 words of the communique that have gone down in history as “the long telegram” warned the Truman administration of the end of the alliance with Stalin and the beginning of an era of confrontation between the two superpowers to control the planet. Kennan’s analysis shaped Washington’s foreign policy until the fall of the Communist sham in 1991.
Almost eight decades later, the remnants of the USSR are waging an uncertain war in Ukraine and half the world has turned their backs on them. Putin’s Russia is a drug addict to China, a junkie clinging desperately to the only hand that supplies it with hallucinogens to keep the economy afloat in turbulent times. As European energy export doors close, Russian gas and oil flows to China increase, and as its arsenals run out, Chinese weapons and technology appear as the only realistic alternative. Russian submission to the empire of the east is such that even the end of the Ukrainian invasion will be indirectly decided by Beijing when it has left its partner of circumstances dry.
Xi Jingping’s visit to Moscow is the first sound of warning about the risks that a protracted conflict has for the Chinese economy still reeling after the disastrous management of the anti-pandemic plan. So far the Chinese regime is winning a war it is not fighting. From the barrier, he witnesses the bleeding of a pleading Russia and an angry West that chains together financial crises and social cuts to buy cannons. But this happy world has limits. China’s growth depends on the economic health of its best customers, those who pay well and on time.
A Europe and the United States reduced to autarky by strangulation is not at all the scenario dreamed of by the system of political communism and economic capitalism that governs the Asian giant. The outcome of the equation is easy to solve. When it suits him, the Chinese mandarin will cut the strings of the Russian puppet. It’s only a matter of time.
