In 1946, when the embers of World War II were still smoldering, 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 statement 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 collapse of the communist farce in 1991.
Almost eight decades later, the remnants of the USSR settle an uncertain war in Ukraine and half the world has turned its back on them. Putin's Russia is a Chinese drug addict, a junkie desperately clinging to the only hand that supplies him with hallucinogens to keep his economy afloat in troubled times. As Europe's doors to export energy close, Russian oil and gas flows to China increase, and as their arsenals run out, Chinese weapons and technology appear the only realistic alternative. The Russian submission to the eastern empire is such that even the end of the Ukrainian invasion will be decided indirectly by Beijing, when it has left its partner in circumstances to the bone.
Xi Jingping's visit to Moscow is a first warning signal about the risks that a prolonged conflict has for the Chinese economy, still reeling from the disastrous management of the anti-pandemic plan. So far the Chinese regime is winning a war that it is not waging. From the mockery, he witnesses the bloodletting of a pleading Russia and an enraged West that chains 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 US doomed to autarky by strangulation is not, far from it, 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 just a matter of time.
