Russia and China are proof that an alternative basis of international relations is possible. And fortunately, both are strong enough to prevail for the sake of peace.

For many observers around the world, the cordial and cooperative relations between Russia and China are inspiring, precisely at a time of mounting international tensions and belligerence.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hailed the bilateral relations between Russia and China as a model for inter-state cooperation in the 21st century.

In a videoconference this week with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, the two leaders expressed warm greetings of friendship. Putin described the border between their countries as representing “a belt of eternal peace and good-neighborliness”.

President Xi said that both nations based their sound relations on principles of mutual respect and non-interference in internal affairs, in accordance with international law and the UN Charter. Both countries, too, he noted, were committed to advancing people-centered development as a genuine manifestation of democracy and human rights.

Referring to the United States and its Western allies, the Chinese leader adroitly remarked how “international forces” had appointed themselves the right to meddle in the affairs of China and Russia under the duplicitous guise of advocating democracy and human rights. In doing so, these foreign powers were “trampling” all over international law and stoking dangerous tensions.

It is hard to disagree with that assessment. Just in recent weeks, the United States and its allies in the G7, NATO and European Union have been amplifying accusations against Russia and China over alleged malign conduct. It’s all sound and fury signifying little in the way of substance. Step back from the shrill rhetoric and sensational claims and what is actually apparent is an attempt to manipulate public opinion into accepting Western aggression towards Russia and China. The poachers are making themselves the gamekeepers in an audacious inversion of reality.

The Western powers arrogantly assume the right to rebuke over a bewildering array of issues. There is a vast media campaign of public perception management going on. In short, propaganda and psychological gaslighting.

Russia and China are accused of “authoritarianism”; of abusing human rights; of threatening Ukraine on the one hand and Taiwan on the other. China is condemned for alleged “genocide” against its Uighur people and “as a result” the U.S. and its allies are conducting a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.

The evidence for all these tendentious claims is flimsy if non-existent.

The United States and the European Union are relentless in their accusations of a Russian military build-up and threat to invade Ukraine. Sanctions are drawn up to potentially cripple the Russian economy. But where’s the evidence or even credible logic? The U.S. and European governments and Western media have not reported any substantive evidence to back up their claims against Russia. Moscow has consistently and categorically rejected these claims as “hysterical nonsense”.

Russian troops are on Russian territory. The supposed satellite images depicting military build-up “on Ukraine’s borders” are of Russian troops in established bases such as Yelnya in Smolensk Oblast hundreds of kilometers from the border. Meanwhile, American and NATO warplanes and warships are increasingly menacing Russia’s borders in unscheduled maneuvers thousands of kilometers from their bases.

This is all ludicrous and is hardly worthwhile rebutting every accusation since it is time-consuming to do so. Provocative narratives are distractions from reality.

The germane point is this: the U.S. and its Western allies are self-anointed to throw pejorative claims at Russia and China when the reality is they are hurling bricks in glasshouses. Washington and its European partners have run amok for decades, destroying nations with illegal foreign wars, killing en masse civilians from drone assassinations and indiscriminate bombings. These criminal governments have no shame in smearing others with accusations that resonate a thousand-fold with the appalling reality of their own heinous misconduct.

Just look at some events this week. Russia has called on the United States and its NATO allies to agree on a mutual basis for security in Europe pertaining to its borders. So far, the U.S.-led military bloc has rebuffed Moscow’s reasonable concerns. NATO’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg arrogantly dismissed Russia’s appeals for the bloc to cease its eastward expansion. (Somehow it seems fitting that this automaton is reportedly applying to become the next head of Norway’s central bank after he steps down from NATO. It’s all just careerism and payoffs for Stoltenberg, who, as the quip goes, is more secretary than general.)

Then we have the European Union’s unelected wooden president Ursula von Der Leyen announcing that the bloc has prepared sanctions that will have “massive consequences” on Russia’s economy “in the event of further military aggression on Ukraine”. Based on what? What aggression is she talking about? The one that the United States intelligence agencies have told her to mouth like a ventriloquist? She is certainly not referring to the aggression of the U.S. and NATO funneling billions of dollars of weapons into a Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev that is waging a war against a civilian population in Southeast Ukraine for the last nearly eight years. (Russian President Putin is correct to describe that siege as resembling genocide.)

Western media report breathlessly on how Russia and China have “seen their relations deteriorate with the West”. But such media don’t explain or investigate why such deterioration is happening.

It is essentially instructive that the United States and its European powers are self-evidently behaving as Neo-colonialists and imperialists. They presume to have the superior right to interfere in other nations based on self-righteous arrogance and self-serving machinations.

It is absurd that the United States is declaring a diplomatic boycott of China’s Olympic Games given its own legion of flagrant violations and crimes against humanity, past and present. Australia and Canada have living legacies of genocide and yet they too have the brass-necks to pontificate to China about unsubstantiated claims of human rights abuses.

Going down this cynical, hypocritical path is par for the course for Western states. It is their inherent modus operandi. But ultimately it is futile. It inevitably leads to conflict and war.

Western relations towards Russia and China are becoming crystal clear in their incorrigible belligerence. The United States and its capitalist-imperialist partners-in-crime simply cannot coexist with other nations in peace and cooperation. The principles of peace and lawful respect for others are anathemas.

The toxic, destructive behavior of Western powers is more and more a transparent disgrace in today’s world. By contrast, Russia and China are proof that an alternative basis of international relations is possible. And fortunately, both are strong enough to prevail for the sake of peace.