Surely no one should see the war in Ukraine as a net positive. The toll in lives on both sides, the destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure and the Russian human rights violations, not to mention the high cost to western economies in an era of ballooning deficits and high inflation, all add up to an unmitigated catastrophe. No one can be happy with the conflict, except perhaps for China, which increasingly benefits from the relegation of Russia to its ever more junior status in their unequal Eurasian partnership.