It was a peculiar move. As Russian troops moved in, despite shared intelligence and warnings by the West, China decided not to get its citizens out of Ukraine. Instead, it suggested they display a Chinese flag prominently at their window. A few days later, the advice changed. Take down your flag, Beijing advised, and get out.

Diplomats scrambled to interpret this. A view emerged that it must show that China had been blindsided by the invasion. Just days before, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping had signed a pact claiming their friendship had “no limits”. Yet if Mr Putin had warned his new best friend about the war, surely Mr Xi would have evacuated his citizens?

Here’s a theory that makes much more sense. Beijing knew about the invasion and, taking Mr Putin’s assessment at face value, assumed that it would be quick and easy. As soon as the Russian troops arrived, they would see the Chinese flags and know to show the proper respect.

It didn’t turn out that way. But the underlying logic of this version of events is chilling. Beijing is no neutral party. It tacitly supported the invasion and, while retaining public deniability at the UN and elsewhere, has shown its hand quietly.

Comments supportive of Ukraine are heavily censored on the Chinese internet, for example; not so those supporting Russia or criticising Nato. Anti-Americanism is the ideological glue binding together all Mr Xi’s foreign and domestic political policy. The war in Ukraine is no exception.

After all, on the face of it, the war looks like an opportunity for Beijing. Assuming that Mr Xi did know about it in advance, he probably assumed that it would continue Mr Putin’s successful campaign of undermining Western credibility and illustrate that export dependency breeds weakness in one’s enemies.

Following the storming of the US Capitol and the shambolic Afghan withdrawal, the Chinese Communist Party might even have hoped it would help bring on the expected collapse of the Western democracies as major powers.

This points to a sinister new era, in which the two great powers of Eurasia agree to carve up each end of the continent and offer a mutual backstop against Western sanctions. If Moscow needs new markets for its commodities, a channel to access trade and foreign lending, and a source of semiconductors, China can help.

In turn, China can tap Russia for cheap raw materials, in line with the deal they made in February.

Even with Russia’s war not quite going to plan, some still argue that it helps China. For Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres with a historical perspective, it is a satisfying reversal of the Sino-Russian relationship during the Stalinist era, when Chairman Mao played the junior partner.

A weakened Russia will depend more on China, a recession triggered by rising energy prices will weaken the West, and Nato will be bogged down. The sanctions have prompted speculation that China will accelerate plans to build up its own financial system and currency.

Not so fast. In truth, the war – or, more specifically, the war’s effect on the West – could instead signal the start of a significantly more difficult geopolitical environment for China.

For one thing, the runaway success of China’s model over the last few decades relies upon a world that is largely open to its investment and exports and indifferent to ideological creeds. China’s integration with the global economy means, for example, that its banks will likely end up obeying most American sanctions even if they would rather not, for the sake of retaining access to the vast array of economic activity that is linked to the US or the dollar.

The renminbi itself is unable to displace the dollar fully because it is subject to capital controls, which Beijing won’t be giving up any time soon. As for access to Russia’s commodities, the war hasn’t changed that much.

Covid had already triggered a review of supply chains across the world. Sanctions on Russia are accelerating the trend. European governments were already worrying about medical and technology supplies. Now they are worrying about gas and rare metals, too.

Private companies, meanwhile, have just been painfully burned by sanctions on Russia. Decoupling from China would be a much bigger operation, but the experience is already sparking conversations about exposure to China if war were to break out in Asia. Existing concerns about forced labour and the security of telecoms or electronics supplies are widening to other areas.

But the biggest reason why Mr Putin’s gamble is not to his ally’s advantage is that Ukraine and its people have reminded the West what we stand for – and inspired us to stand up for it.

The era of loose talk not backed by real intent or posturing over “strategic autonomy” while treating defence as a distasteful relic is over. Defence budgets are going to rise.

The divisions sown by Donald Trump, Brexit and the culture wars have been put into perspective and, for the first time since the Cold War, democratic countries have been forced to think strategically about their interests and alliances.

Nato, previously over-extended and decaying, has been given a new sense of purpose and resolve. Germany, for the first time, has realised that its cravenly commercial foreign policy must end and that it must play its part in the defence of freedom. Instead of outsourcing all production abroad and luxuriating in our virtue over climate change, energy policy is back on the agenda.

China, in its implicit support for the devastation unfolding in Europe, no longer looks like a neutral party or a golden goose.

In Asia, meanwhile, Japan and South Korea have begun to talk for the first time about the possibility of nuclear guarantees for Taiwan. The notion that Western democracies would get “distracted” by Ukraine doesn’t seem to be playing out in practice. The United States sent a delegation to Taiwan to discuss defence a few days ago and there is more talk than ever of the island’s fate.

Now, it is obviously easy to talk and hard to act and the sanctions on Russia are going to take their toll on the West too, especially if they expand to include oil and gas. But my instinct says that the West has woken up to the catastrophic consequences of empty talk without action.

Daily, we are watching Ukraine bear the devastating consequences of the West’s failure to think strategically and Europe’s fantastical belief that our values alone will keep us safe.

China might have thought a quick little war in Europe by its ally would be a helpful irritant to the Western world. Instead, it has roused the spirit of freedom from its slumber.