China is trying to shape and lead the existing world order. “It benefits enormously from international stability,” Fareed Zakaria, the foreign-policy journalist, has pointed out. As The Times’s Thomas Friedman wrote, “Peace has been very good for China.”

Russia is both weaker and less satisfied with the recent developments. “Putin may dream of restoring Soviet-era greatness,” Paul Krugman wrote yesterday, “but China’s economy, which was roughly the same size as Russia’s 30 years ago, is now 10 times as large.” Today, Russia’s economy largely revolves around energy exports, giving it an incentive to foment political instability; oil prices often go up when the world is unstable.

“Putin is sort of an arsonist of the system,” Hass said. “China’s interests are not advanced by that.”