China and Russia arm in arm on the moon: agreement to build a space station

The strategic collaboration between Russia and China is expanding further and further, even into deep space. Yesterday’s news was the will of the two States to sign a historic intergovernmental agreement soon that will lead to the construction of a space station on the Moon, the first born of a synergy between Moscow and Beijing. A novelty, the one announced yesterday by the Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin during a videoconference meeting with the Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, of high symbolic value: thanks to the unprecedented Sino-Russian collaboration, the geopolitical reconfiguration of the world in a multipolar sense, which it has existed for several years now, it is ready to be extended to spatial balances as well, no less important than terrestrial ones. Thus, the international chessboard of the celestial vault, after more than thirty years of relative stability, suddenly changes again, giving rise to what, according to many analysts, is already announced as a new “space race”. The similarities with the old and relentless competition that for more than 40 years saw the USA and the USSR challenge each other for the hegemony of space, on the other hand, are more than evident, an inevitable reflection of the geopolitical convulsions that have been taking place for several months now. Starting precisely from the opposition of two alternative blocs – bearers of alternative political systems and alternative worldviews – willing to dispute supremacy over the world in order to expand their spheres of influence to the maximum.

A kind of new Cold War, also in space, in which, however, the challenging powers are no longer just two: if on one side of the curtain there is always the United States with its historical allies, on the other, on the contrary, the actors today there are many, as the Sino-Russian agreement on the lunar station plastically demonstrates. In short, the balances are changing, fatally directed towards a scenario that in the near future will see groups of nations uniting in alliances hitherto difficult even to imagine and in unprecedented synergies built around recent international events, in the first place the Russia war -Ukraine . In this sense, the recent agreement between Moscow and Beijing is emblematic: after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two countries came closer in mutual interests as never before, becoming, if not exactly allies, certainly strategic partners, not only on a economic. It is no coincidence that Mikhail Mishustin commented on the imminent signing of the agreement with these words: “Our countries have similar approaches to many problems of our time. – declared the Russian Prime Minister to Tass – Together, we support the formation of a multipolar architecture of international relations and are ready to face emerging challenges and growing external pressures together».

Words that leave little doubt about what the main geopolitical objective of the two States is: the multipolar reconfiguration of the world balance in an inevitably anti-American key. And within this strategy, the new space race is certainly no exception, given that the first consequence of these new agreements is also the most obvious: the possibility that the American hegemony of the skies will be called into question again, as has already happened between the end of World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union. This time, however, with one more superpower at stake, namely China, which in turn could become the mouthpiece of a whole series of other so-called “non-aligned” countries, from India to Brazil and the Arab countries . A new world order is therefore emerging on the horizon and the famous “end of history” – understood as the definitive victory of the American empire, declared perhaps too hastily the day after the collapse of the USSR – may be far from happening. On earth as in heaven.