THE REAL REASON PUTIN IS FLYNN TO BEIJING

There are diplomatic encounters that matter for what they sign and there are encounters that matter for what they reveal, and the recurring tragedy of the West, always so well equipped and so poorly informed, is its chronic inability to tell one from the other. When Vladimir Putin lands in Beijing on May 19, the Western press, faithful to its vocation of photographing red carpets while history slips through the service entrance, will treat the visit as the closing panel of a busy diplomatic season. There will be forty agreements, there will be the Russia-China year of education, there will perhaps be the announcement of Power of Siberia 2. None of this, however, is the real business. The real business is the synchronization of clocks.

Observe the sequence, for the sequence is the argument itself. On April 27, two months into the American and Israeli war against Iran, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi flew to Moscow and sat with Putin to review, item by item, what Tehran could absorb, what it could not, and what it would settle for at the Strait of Hormuz. Nine days later, on May 6, the same Araghchi delivered substantially the same brief to Wang Yi in Beijing, laying out the state of the negotiations with Washington, Iran's next steps, and every active file of the crisis. In mid-May, Donald Trump arrived in the Chinese capital with a delegation so large it constituted a political object in its own right. And on the 19th, at last, comes Putin. Whoever sees in this chain nothing but a crowded calendar has mistaken the procession for the liturgy.