What impressed me the most about the 2022 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony in Beijing was the image of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The first images of the Russian president showed him dozing off, his head sinking deep into his shoulders. He looked disinterested and bored. Who wouldn’t be, you might say. The parade of national teams was tedious and never-ending. Of course, if something similar had happened during the Winter Olympics in Sochi or during one of the military parades on the Red Square in Moscow, Russian cameras would not have shown the dictator in the position of a mere mortal. But, this year’s Olympics is not Putin’s show. It’s Xi Jinping’s game now. And Russia could never participate in any of China’s strategic moves. It is inconceivable that China would let Russia assist in the presumed invasion of Taiwan or defend the strategic economic and military zone in the South China Sea. Nobody can. China is forging its own exclusive path. 

Putin, they say, came to Beijing to support China, the host of the Olympic Games that many world leaders ignored. In reality, Putin came to Beijing to support his imbroglio in Ukraine. But he did not get an open backing. The record of the talks between Chinese and Russian leaders before the ceremony at the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing does not mention Ukraine. In his Ukrainian ruse, Putin remains alone, as demonstrated by his symbolic solitary images during the ceremony. The world was able to see this message because NBC, an American network broadcasting the Olympics for five decades, brought it to us, even if only for a few seconds. But a trained and experienced eye could catch its meaning. A few minutes after that first image, the network transmitted another image of Putin, this time awake and standing on his feet with both hands up, saluting the Russian Olympic team as it entered the stadium. Unfortunately for Putin, his motionless, airlifted arms gave an impression of surrender rather than greeting. In both images, Putin was alone, surrounded only by the empty chairs and stairs of the ice-cold stadium. There were no bodyguards, no advisers, no interpreters, no hosts, no Xi Jinping who invited him to Beijing. It was just Putin and the space around him. I thought that these few images were more telling than the pages-long joint statement that Russia and China signed hours before the Opening Ceremony, underscoring their determination to present a united front, a message aimed at the United States. An image, as we know, is sometimes better than a thousand words.

However, the joint statement is a big lie, just part of this new normal introduced by the Trump administration years ago. The document reads, “Russia and China declare themselves the world powers with rich cultural and historical heritage, having long-standing traditions of democracy, that rely on thousand-years of experience and broad popular support and consideration of the needs and interests of citizens. Russia and China guarantee their people the right to take part through various means and in various forms in the administration of the State and public life in accordance with the law.”

The statement intends to announce that we are at the threshold of new world order, while the old one is going through momentous changes, and humanity is entering into a new era of rapid development and profound transformation. The two nations have declared that it is time for the redistribution of world power and that the international community is showing a growing demand for leadership aimed at peaceful and gradual development. There should be no doubt how the new redistribution of power would look and who should be at the head of this new peaceful leadership – China and Russia, of course.

But there is a catch – why the old Mao Zedong could call Vladimir Putin,  and to a lesser extent Xi Jinping, the paper tigers. Mao would say that this strategic partnership between China and Russia is nothing but a piece of paper, a tiger without teeth.

For the last two decades, every agreement between two countries was considered an act of friendship against America. It started with deteriorating relationships following NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia and a direct hit on China’s embassy in Belgrade in 1999. It was a period of absolute American dominance that began after the Cold War and the collapse of many socialist regimes. Today, Russia and China feel that the time has come to challenge the declining powerhouse of capitalism. Implementing the idea of strategic partnership, in 2019, Beijing and Moscow upgraded their relationship of partnership into a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era. Russia and China supposedly cooperate on key international issues, from global governance to defense and security affairs. But despite the current, more intense ties between Beijing and Moscow, a long-lasting geopolitical partnership between the two countries doesn’t seem feasible. There is a persisting old rivalry between the two former socialist empires and a substantial difference in the fields of governance, economy, and the way to project power, not to mention deep cultural dissimilarities. These distinctions tend to create obstacles towards strategic convergence. However, their raison d’être is to challenge the Western-ruled international order and the shared hatred against the United States, their main adversary. 

But when Putin began deploying the Russian army along the Ukrainian border, he did not consult China. Russia would never disclose its military secrets. When President Joe Biden retrieved the American forces from Afghanistan (a gesture never understood correctly by the shortsighted media) and declared the intention to dedicate substantial national resources to America’s competition with China, its primary and only rival, Moscow was out. Not in an absolute way, of course. But it must have been a similar feeling to the abandonment and betrayal inflicted on Putin by President George Bush Sr. when he promised the former colonel of the KGB a seat at the negotiable table. This promise was never kept and was later openly abandoned by president Bill Clinton, with Nato’s expansion toward the East. As described in a Yonder many years ago, other issues turned Putin away from the West. With Donald Trump removed from the White House and the escalation of the U.S.-China duel, Putin must have felt pushed even further away from the table. That is why the deployment of Russian forces along Ukraine’s border can be interpreted as a cry for attention, a tool to distract the Americans. Engaging America can also be considered Putin’s gift to China as his second front opening. In short, it is a cover-up operation. 

Putin now has attention from Americans and the entire western hemisphere. It’s unbelievable how many world leaders are now ready to break pandemic precautions to apply the shuttle diplomacy between Moscow, Istanbul, Washington, Berlin. They want to patch up the situation and share the shine of the world stage. The whole thing looks ridiculous because Putin will never attack Ukraine. Not now and not shortly.

Such is the opinion of William B. Taylor Jr., a longtime diplomat who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine :

“I think Putin has already blinked in some sense. He was in a stare-down. And now he is looking for a way out. He’s overplayed his hand, and he may, for a while, settle for entering negotiations on a series of topics.”

This does not preclude some kind of skirmish that tends to occur every time weapons, and an army are amassed. It was not a coincidence that Joe Biden, in his first press conference about the situation on the Ukrainian border, said that American sanctions against Russia would depend on the size of the presumed Russian attack on Ukraine. Biden agrees that Russian hostility may end in a skirmish, at maximum. But he was not supposed to say this since the play’s script contained much harsher threats. Biden’s administration took two days to repair the president’s gaffe. To enforce the idea that the U.S. was taking Putin’s threats seriously, Washington decided to send a few thousand more soldiers to be stationed in eastern Europe.

Currently, Russia is a significant seller of advanced arms, including widely sought-after missile systems. Moreover, Russia has essential energy resources like gas and oil and remains the most prominent grain exporter. But besides this vital aspect of the former Socialist empire, Russia is absent in all the areas that will shape the future. It is neither a technological powerhouse nor a research and development leader in any primary industry. Its once-admirable education system is now a shadow of its former self. And save for oil and gas, Russia’s economy has retreated in size and scale. Compared to medium-sized European or Asian countries, it is now vastly smaller than the US or Chinese economies.

China currently leads the race for world supremacy. Using the current Olympic Games as an allegory, we may conclude that everything China shows in Beijing has already lost its glitter and fascination. While China needed to impress the world with high tech and organizational capacities, sustained by military nationalism in the 2008 Olympics, the artificial snow during this year’s Winter Olympics is the story about an empire showing a slight decline, perhaps before reaching its peak. China cannot compete in winter sports. The stadiums built to receive thousands, if not millions, of Chinese patriotic supporters are now empty due to Covid. The Olympics deprived of its audience is a lost occasion for yet another display of overwhelming national pride. This year, the Opening Ceremony was staged with a repetition of old visual effects and done with a limited budget. To avoid the brutta figura in the winter sports performance, China now shops abroad to build teams that could decently defend the image of always-victorious China. 

Still, China keeps its lead among the three superpowers, regardless of future economic and financial problems that may lead to dire consequences. The list of those problems is long, and if we add its current repressive and authoritarian ruling, the country will have no chance to win any world sympathy.

And the United States? These pages have explained at large the new Biden strategy to confront authoritarian regimes and bolster democracy. To use the words of Tarek Osman, America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has nothing to do with the lessons learned from the war. It’s about the future. 

For over a decade now, the US has been transforming its strategic positioning in the world to amass the most important of its capabilities in East Asia, the theatre that will witness the first phase of its strategic confrontation with China. Strategic confrontation does not mean war, although military clashes are scenarios both the US and China have in their calculations. At heart, however, strategic confrontation means competition in the political, economic, cultural and technological domains so as to secure one side’s objectives.

Whether Biden can be successful with this strategy remains in doubt. With the midterm elections looming, Congress could quickly go back into the hands of the far-right. Democrats will not be without responsibility if this is the case. While we know what this will mean for the United States, a new American paralysis could also open up the door to Chinese supremacy internationally.