Le “Western collective” against the “international of autocrats”. The formula is undoubtedly caricatural, but it describes part of the reality. The background of the war in Ukraine is that of a confrontation between two “camps” which dispute the preponderance on the world of tomorrow. Beyond the tragedy that the Ukrainians are experiencing, two power blocs clash.

Xi Jinping’s China has chosen to support, politically at least, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It didn’t have to be. Beijing had cards to play to play another – more soothing – role. But, in the name of a shared higher ambition, Xi deemed it more important to stick to Putin’s argument: in the Ukrainian affair, everything is the fault of NATO, the United States, this “collective West” constantly more threatening with regard to Moscow – not a breath of nuance in a discourse of combat grinded to satiety by the entire Chinese propaganda machine.

Why ? Because Russia is the friend, the comrade in a battle to shape a “new international order”to change relations between States in the 21st^e century and to enter a ” new era “ which will see the end of the Western leadership established in 1945. The war in Ukraine is a pity, but Beijing’s superior interest is to seal in the test a partnership with Russia in the service of a specific objective: to create an international environment conducive to autocratic government.

In contrast, President Joe Biden inscribes the support given to Ukraine by the United States and its allies in the struggle between democracies and autocracies – a confrontation which he considers decisive for the future of the century. Invited at the beginning of May to the Festival du FinancialTimes in Washington, Henry Kissinger, 98, a good part of whom is in the service of the real-politician school, discreetly lets it be understood that he would not take up Biden’s formula on his own. We imagine that the former Secretary of State would more willingly repeat the “coup” of 1972: cultivating Beijing against Moscow…

Diplomatic-ideological offensive

But Kissinger does not deny the diplomatico-ideological offensive that China is waging against the West on the international scene. This campaign, often conducted in a jargon whose lightness is not the first quality, is admirably told by the sinologist Alice Ekman, of the Institute for Security Studies of the European Union (EUISS), in the publication ” China and the Battle of Coalitions” (Chaillot Paper).

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