It's ironic that capitalist Russia and communist China have better relations and are working together to foil US imperialist interests than the USSR and communist China had.
“The world system, and American influence in it, would be completely upended if Moscow and Beijing aligned more closely,” John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, wrote in the report, to which Defense Department officials and other analysts contributed." -- The world system is, in fact, the neoliberal capitalist system presently dominated by US imperialism and its allies and has spawned war and poverty and fascist regimes throughout the Third World under the guise of democracy and economic development. It's true that Russia after the collapse of its previous socialist economy had hoped to become a leading member of "the world system" and Putin early on even talked about Russia joining NATO and the EU but was rebuffed in no uncertain terms by the US which needs the "Russian threat" in the West as well as the "Chinese threat" in the East to justify its enormous military budget and the growth of its weapons industry at the expense of social and economic initiatives to improve the lives and well being of its citizens rather than the 1% of capitalists that constitute it actual ruling class. La Force des choses has pushed the Russians into the orbit of the Chinese communists and this has alarmed the NYT editorial board. Well, once upon a time communist Russia and capitalist America allied to defeat Hitler, perhaps communist China and capitalist Russia can work together to check US imperialism.
