I hate to question Krauthammer's opinion, but this may be less a case of Russia and China allying to confront American influence in the world, and more a case of Russia simply getting desperate to find friends in the world.
It's always good to question...I was wondering why France wasn't included.
They have been attempting to unfiy the EU against the US for several years now, often times with no honesty stake other than to control the US's percieved power in the world.
Well this did not happen over night. Yeltsin kicked off the acceleration of Sino-Russian ties way back around '94. That process sort of dawdled along. Then, Putin acclerated it even more, with the crux being the 2001 Treaty. From there, things have moved into a complete stand down at the border, and military cooperation.
Now, putting on hat, maybe made of tin foil or, maybe made of a more respectable substance .... there are some obscure white papers, as well as a few books, which make the case that even the "Sino-Soviet Split" was suspect. What would have been the rationale for fakery? The subsequent sequence of events may hold clues. After the "split" the Sino-US thaw conveniently arrived. This very thaw is what convinced us that, now we had a China card, we could negotiate more with the USSR, and could trust detente and arms control more. It also opened the door to the sequence of events that has led us to getting way intertwined, economically, with the PRC. Look at all the dynamics, both between us and the PRC, as well as within our own polity, which have resulted from that intertwining. 40 years ago there would have been no debate - Red China was an enemy. The fact that there is debate now, would at least make me wonder if the whole "opening" of the PRC did not have ulterior motives. Maybe getting a bit too deep into Sun Tzu gordian knots here, who knows. /hat off