Forming Alliances
The 2022 Winter Olympics are underway in Beijing, China. You may be interested in it, I’m not. But one item that was of interest was dismissed by most news outlets last week.
It’s traditional for nations to send delegations to the Olympic Games…sometimes it’s the president or prime minister, or a high-ranking official. The First Lady represented the U.S. at the Summer Olympics last year in Tokyo, for example.
For a host of reasons…human rights abuses, foisting COVID unto the world…the U.S. allowed athletes to participate, but refused to acknowledge the event via diplomatic outlets, like sending a delegation to the Opening Ceremonies.
But others did attend, and that meant a one-on-one meeting with Chinese President Xi was part of the plan.
So when Russian President Putin met face-to-face with Chinese President Xi last week…what do you suppose they talked about? Should we be somewhat concerned that the leaders of the two largest trouble spots—for different reasons—were palling around? Do you really think the conversation agenda was limited to how many medals each nation would win? Actually, do you think that even came up?
Somehow, in the current climate here and abroad, I’m more than a little uneasy about a Putin/Xi meeting. The games end on February 20. Wonder if a very different sort of games in places like Taiwan and Ukraine will begin soon after.
