"The Putin–Xi summit."

Three syllables from an alliance.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Xi and Putin in Moscow this week. (Grigoriy Sisoev/ RIA Novosti.)

25 MARCH—Now that Vladmir Putin and Xi Jinping have concluded their summit in Moscow, an unusually long series of meetings over three days, are those purporting to lead the United States prepared to drop their wishful thinking, their miscalculations, and their illusions as to the significance and durability of the Sino–Russian relationship and get with the 21^st century? 

Our no-hesitation answer is, “Not a chance.” The policy cliques in Washington signaled daily last week their determination to misread the Russian and Chinese presidents’ 40^th summit so as to carry on hallucinating as to America’s “global leadership” and its position at the center of a Ptolemaic universe, the U.S. the earth around which the sun and all other nations revolve. 

The magnitude of the Putin–Xi summit lies beyond question. They got a lot done in all sorts of spheres—trade, energy, resources, infrastructure, investment, high-technology collaborations. If TASS, the Russian wire service, is to be believed, and I don’t see why we should not take its word on this occasion, Sino–Russian relations just took a surprising turn on the security side by way of the depth of their mutual commitments. More on this point anon.

Of these matters you have read little to nothing if you rely on our corporate press. What you have read is a lot of truly bad reporting—this because if Washington is into the game of pretend, so must be the press that serves it.

This degree of willful blindness is getting to be simply too much. My take on this collective psychosis, if by “psychosis’ we mean a disrupted relationship with reality: The policy people and the baying Russophobes and Sinophobes on Capitol Hill know very well that America’s global preeminence wanes by the day, but no one in power wants to say so. “Not on my watch” is the watchword.  

“Not a chance” it is, immediately, but getting to “Not a chance” is interesting nonetheless. What went on in Moscow during the first half of last week such that Washington and the clerks in the media who serve it were so intent on not understanding what went on? What didn’t go on, equally, and why were our “influencers” and “thought leaders” —I just love these two terms for “the people who tell us what to think”—so chagrinned that what didn’t go on didn’t go on?