Collaboration between Russia and China to undermine the global influence of the United States is a marriage of strategic convenience. It is likely to culminate in a shot-gun divorce as Russia’s internal problems and China’s external aspirations accelerate. Beijing will be at the forefront among Russia’s many neighbors in claiming territories that were once seized by Moscow.

In its Tsarist, Soviet, and Putinist guises, Muscovite Russia has been an expansionist imperial structure. But every empire assembled through conquest and colonization faces contraction or collapse at some point in its history, including the current Russian Federation. Russia’s state failure will be accelerated by renewed claims on its territory from neighboring countries harboring historical grievances. The disintegration of the Soviet bloc thirty years ago marked the collapse of Russia’s external empire. But it did not address the future of Russia’s internal empire; consisting of 85 federal subjects, including 22 ethnic republics and several distinct regions deprived of self-determination and subject to increasing centralization, repression, and impoverishment.