Beyond the arc of the ebola epidemic, and outside the parameters of the fight against the Islamic State, a far more fundamental change to the world order is taking place. It's the rapprochement of China and Russia - an alliance of convenience animated less by common interest than a common opponent.
History shows that the Russia-China relationship has seen its share of outright conflict, but for now, they're a happy geopolitical couple. Signs are everywhere. You know something's going on when the question of a Sino-Russian entente - or will it be Russo-Chinese - is the subject of features in publications ranging from Mother Jones and The Nation to The Washington Post and The National Interest, not to mention al Jazeera. In Shanghai, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping spit vodka and toast a 30-year natural gas deal that will send Russian product to its eastern neighbor. In Beijing, "Putin: Born for Russia," a biography of Russia's president, sits on the best-seller list. No word yet on whether Xi will be photographed bench-pressing a giant panda, but this political season, the authoritarian strongman is back in style.
Part of the attraction of these once-ideological cousins is hard-headed real-politik. China has no problem with a revanchist Russia claiming Crimea and biting off a good chunk of Ukraine - Beijing likely expects Moscow to return the favor as China extends its territorial claims in the East and South China Seas and in the eastern provinces of India - or as China calls it, South Tibet. Broader objectives, such as the replacement of the U.S. dollar as the global currency, will take more time, and the rise of a successor currency could be a source of ruble-yuan competition. But for now, in Moscow as in Beijing, the diminishment of American global influence is a force for common if not concerted action.
This is not a formal alliance. For now, it's like toddlers engaged in parallel play - the not-truly-coordinated, not-really-interactive side-by-side activities of kids sharing the same sandbox. Russia takes to bomber-buzzing along the U.S. coasts and at the edge of allied airspace, a Cold War-era maneuver, while China barrel-rolls U.S. surveillance planes in the South China Sea. Moscow and Beijing don't carry out these aerial antics in tandem. It's enough that each for its own reasons believes now is the time to brush back American geopolitical hegemony.
The same reasoning extends to nuclear weapons. Elite opinion in the post-Cold War West may deem the concept of nuclear deterrence obsolete, but China clearly disagrees, and showed as much by test-firing a new long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead with a range of 10,000 kilometers - enough target all of Europe and reach as far as the U.S. East Coast. Russia has taken to musing about its own nuclear prowess: Putin himself reminded an audience at a Kremlin-sponsored youth camp that Russia remains a nuclear power, and "it's best not to mess with us."
The Eurasian powers' proxy conflicts also dovetail nicely: Russia's support for the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad, and Moscow's carefully modulated arms and nuclear activities with Iran, undermine U.S. interests in the region. Without China's support for North Korea, the Kim dynasty would have long since imploded. These moves on the global chessboard keep Washington and its allies focused on potential flash-points, limiting freedom of action and stretching American security commitments to the point of fraying.
But does this alliance of convenience have staying power? Several years ago, a Moscow-based investment banker wrote that "Russia and China make a perfect couple. Russia has resources that China needs, while Russia needs capital and China has excess savings." True enough, but China also has excess people looking for living space - 100 million alone in the provinces bordering Russia - while Russia has less than 5 million people inhabiting its Far East, an area equal in size to the lower 48 United States.
And just as Putin yearns to shepherd or coerce the former Warsaw Pact countries back into the Russian fold, China remembers the shame of the Qing Dynasty's forced approval of the "Unequal Treaties" of the 1850s. These documents gave Russia full control of Outer Manchuria and its vast resources - the same resources Beijing must now buy from Russia - and they cost China its access to the Sea of Japan.
Asked during a call-in show whether Russia was interested in following the annexation of Crimea with the reclaiming of Alaska, Putin joked that Alaska is "too cold" to be of interest. But the Czar's 1867 sale of Russkaya Amerika - Seward's Folly - came just a few years after China's cessation of Outer Mongolia to Russia, in 1858 and 1860. China has not forgotten. Alaska may be too cold for Putin's tastes, but for China, the Russian Far East may be just right. And with 500,000 ethnic Chinese living on the Russian side of the border, China could borrow a page from the Putin playbook, invoking the right to protect Chinese living abroad.
Nor is conflict unthinkable. China and the Soviet Union fought a brief border war across the Ussuri River in 1969. Back then, the clear signs of friction between Moscow and Beijing led to the first of Henry Kissinger's secret trips to China. Will some future U.S. secretary of state undertake a similar secret mission - and if so, will it be to Beijing or to Moscow?
So much separates China and Russia. They have fought before, and they could fight again. But for now, one large interest unites them: countering U.S. global dominance, and at a time when the globe rests heavily on America's shoulders.
