China and Russia Meet To End America's World Order

What’s happening: Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week to discuss trade, a path to ending the war in Ukraine, and overthrowing America’s dominance. How? China will increase oil imports from Russia and push forward a pipeline to facilitate it. Russia will use the Chinese yuan for payments with Asia, Africa, and Latin America, globally propping up China’s currency and threatening the American dollar.

Picking sides: These developments come after China successfully swiped at America’s global peacemaker status, brokering peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia and forming a new sphere of influence in the Middle East. That influence could expand to other countries given that China and Russia surprisingly lead the U.S. in popularity among developing countries—a trend that’s exacerbated by U.S. failures abroad. In fact, countries representing 40 percent of the world's population abstained from denouncing Russia in a United Nations vote.

Between the lines:  While some analysts believe that the best geopolitical strategy for the U.S. would be to divide and conquer the two countries and pit Russia and China against each other, American efforts have led to the opposite result. Seeing the battle lines drawn, European leaders are panicking over the possibility of losing China as an economic partner and non-aligned countries like India prepare to walk a tightrope between the countries.