Today’s international security order has been greatly shaken by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, dividing the globe into an alliance of authoritarian regimes led by China and Russia and an alliance of Western democracies supporting Ukraine.
As Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow coincided with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Kyiv, Xi’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kishida’s with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — both held on March 21 — highlighted the world divided between the two alliances.
It is still uncertain whether the entire world will be polarized in this way. But on March 30 Turkey voted to approve Finland’s bid to join NATO, removing the final obstacle to its accession, while China's defense ministry stressed following the Xi-Putin talks that the two countries would work together to build deeper trust between their militaries.