POWERS TO MOTHER: Do Not Reproach Me

Reports surfaced on March 23 that China and Russia have realized they're big, and are getting friendly. The speed at which Washington announced its own "breakthrough" with Mother hardly seemed coincidental; their report, attributed to sources anonymous-but-official, materialized on March 24.

One needn't read terribly deep into these narratives to detect their diverging tones. In his talks with Russia, the future leader of China, Xi Jinping, is concerning himself with just that: the future. Xi and President Medvedev envision continued market prosperity and boom, a new world order that originates from the east. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is literally exchanging bullet points with the Kremlin: to date, those talks have mostly revolved around arms control and nuclear weaponry, around Bush-era missile shields and the lofty goal of "resetting relations"-- all of which does nothing but to trace, again and again, the shape of a closed circle. Some Americans claim they can see the Volga from our shoreline, shimmering, but Alaska is a long ways from Washington.