While the world watches with alarm the deepening entente between and Vladimir Putin鈥檚 , we would do well to recognize the limits and the inevitable failure of this axis of autocracy.
Far from being a formidable alliance of like-minded powers, the relationship is brittle and fraught with historical resentment, strategic contradiction and an unsustainable imbalance of power.
The 鈥渘o limits鈥� partnership is an illusion, an alliance of convenience masquerading as brotherhood. Strip away the joint communiques, military parades and diplomatic fanfare, and you find a hollow shell held together not by trust but by mutual exploitation.
Central Asia is ground zero for this strategic tug-of-war. still regards the region as its imperial backyard, a legacy of czarist conquest and Soviet control.
Yet has surged past economically, embedding itself through the Belt and Road Initiative with roads, railways and debt. The Kremlin deploys troops and pushes the Collective Security Treaty Organization to maintain influence.
builds factories and buys loyalty.
wants political obedience.
The two goals are not compatible, and there is a real clash of ambitions. The former Soviet republics know this, and so do the Kremlin鈥檚 generals. This rivalry is not theoretical; it鈥檚 seriously realistic. wants to be the hegemon; wants to be the indispensable power. Both cannot be true.
northern border, its 鈥渓ast redoubt,鈥� is also under quiet siege.
claims the Arctic as sacrosanct, a fortress of frozen sovereignty. Yet , with no Arctic border of its own, brazenly declares itself a 鈥渘ear-Arctic state鈥� and seeks access to the region鈥檚 energy and shipping lanes.
Arctic ambitions are strategic, not opportunistic. Its plans are written into white papers and enshrined in its naval doctrine.
nationalists see this for what it is: creeping encroachment under the guise of scientific cooperation. As melts the ice, it also melts delusions of sole control.
Their joint exercises and naval drills are carefully choreographed displays. Beneath the surface lies deep mistrust. refuses to sell its most advanced weaponry to . On rare occasions, cash-strapped has made sales to but typically counterbalances them by selling the same systems to regional rivals, especially Vietnam and India.
In response, has stolen and reverse-engineered from what it can, primarily and ironically, via Ukraine, which inherited a vast arsenal of Soviet-designed Russian weaponry. Since its independence in the 1990s, Ukraine has irresponsibly and recklessly sold much of this weaponry to People鈥檚 Liberation Army.
These acquisitions included first aircraft carrier, advanced engines for upgrading the PLA鈥檚 H-6 strategic bombers, Yun-series military transport aircraft, large air-cushioned amphibious landing craft and critical missile and fighter jet systems.
The PLA has replicated these technologies without credit or due compensation, an open secret that infuriates Russian defense officials.
This is not military integration; it is tolerated theft. cannot afford to alienate its largest customer. knows this and continues to push the limits.
and have fought more wars against each other than they have fought together. The border clashes along the Ussuri River in 1969 were not an aberration but a revelation. The Chinese Communist Party unwaveringly views the collapse of the Soviet Union as a result of Russian infidelity to true communism. Unlike the CCP鈥檚 ideological iron grip over the PLA, Mr. Putin鈥檚 abandonment of Leninist ideological control over armed forces, especially Russian mercenaries such as the Wagner Group, is idiotic and self-defeating.
In addition, the deep-seated distrust between these civilizations runs centuries deep. Treaties were signed with guns drawn, and empires were carved with knives at the throat.
Today鈥檚 leaders, Messrs. Xi and Putin, may toast each other in public, but they carry the burden of that history in private. Nationalist resentment lingers in both capitals.
Chinese ultranationalists call the 1858 Treaty of Aigun a national humiliation, one that ceded swaths of territory to . Russian elites fear a slow-motion invasion by Chinese migrants and capital in Siberia and the Russian Far East.
This is not friendship. It is a staring contest between empires, paused for now by mutual hostility toward the United States.
sees less as a partner than a pawn. It is merely a useful distraction for the West, a supplier of cheap gas and a convenient guinea pig for authoritarian learning. When Mr. Putin is no longer useful, he will be discarded. That is the way of the Chinese Communist Party.
There is a reason hesitated initially to materially support en masse after the invasion of Ukraine. It doesn鈥檛 need a strong ; it needs a desperate one.
After Mr. Putin鈥檚 blunders on Ukraine鈥檚 battlefield became apparent, the CCP began to provide unconditional tools of war and other support for aggression in Ukraine on a massive scale. This has made Mr. Putin beholden to Mr. Xi, whose economy is 10 times larger and whose diplomacy is far more agile and opportunistic.
dependence on grows daily in trade, in technology and in even the most basic banking functions.
Mr. Putin once dreamed of as an Eurasian counterweight to the West. He now risks becoming a Chinese vassal. For a man obsessed with sovereignty, this is a profound humiliation.
Make no mistake: and share an enemy in the West, but they do not share a vision of victory. seeks to reclaim lost imperial borders. seeks to rewrite the rules of global governance.
Mr. Putin wants to break NATO; Mr. wants to replace the liberal order with a CCP-centric system.
Where acts out of insecurity, acts out of ambition. Where Mr. Putin relies on brute force, Mr. uses economic coercion, political infiltration and technological dominance.
These are not complementary strategies. They are contradictory road maps to different ends. Eventually, their paths will collide.
What binds and is not solidarity but shared resentment of Western liberalism, American primacy and democratic accountability. Resentment is not a strategy. It is a symptom.
The deeper truth is this: Messrs. Xi and Putin do not trust each other. In geopolitics, as in life, the absence of trust is fatal.
When the moment of reckoning comes, and it will, the dragon and the bear will turn on each other, just like Adolf Hitler鈥檚 Germany and Josef Stalin鈥檚 Soviet Union did nearly 85 years ago.
The West must be ready.