The announcement of a 30-year, $400 million gas contract between the Russians and the Chinese is the news that Western policymakers had been dreading.

During the final hours of Vladimir Putin's visit to Shanghai on May 21, the two countries came to a historic agreement that has been a decade in the making. It appears the "greater diplomatic effort" I prescribed before the deal was summoned.

The announcement was arguably one that the Western media had been relishing, with one U.S. website running the headline: "Russia and China just signed an energy deal. Why you should be scared." But despite appearances, the reality is that this was a deal where cold-headed economics, not politics, have taken center stage.

Onlookers in the U.S. and the European Union took some delight in speculating how low a price the Russians may have accepted for their gas, imagining them as cowed and desperate following Western sanctions and the threat of expulsion from European markets. Analysts can only guess at the price agreed, which has not been disclosed, but the number most often quoted by analysts is $350 per thousand cubic meters.

The Russians had allegedly been pushing for a higher price, but $350 is still significantly higher than the roughly $270 that Ukraine has been paying in recent years on Russia's other border (admittedly, negotiations over Russian demands to hike this to over $400 are ongoing).

But the truth is that in contrast to the politically-infused deals between Russia and Europe on energy supplies, this arrangement with China is a politically agnostic one. While the tone of energy negotiations with Europe has for some time been a dissonant one, the China-Russia deal strikes a much more harmonious note.

This is one enormous energy-hungry country sitting at the table and coming to a mutually beneficial agreement with a neighboring enormous country that has plenty of gas to spare. Both countries are criticised from outside for their human rights, but both are mute on each others' human rights records.

Some comments on the deal have looked to emphasize the geopolitical angle of the deal for China. But China has not made any statements in direct support of the annexation of Crimea as Russia's historical political supporters — such as Cuba, Syria and Nicaragua — have done.

These countries are worlds apart from China, which is in no need of Russia's political patronage. China is less interested in getting involved with other countries' political games.

What's more, before we insinuate that the Europeans and the Chinese are competing over a gas deposit that Putin is dangling before both, we must remember that the gas that is the subject of this deal has never been destined for European markets.

Eastern Siberia is a long way from Europe, and there is no infrastructure in place to take any gas produced West. If China doesn't take the gas in these fields, it will likely be stranded, which makes the supposedly "chummy price" accepted by the Russians all the more comprehensible.

The deal has also, of course, breathed life into the argument over U.S. gas exports internationally. U.S. legislators have made a renewed push for a loosening of bureaucracy over export permits, concerned that the U.S. is going to miss its chance at a "gas export revolution," as natural gas markets shift and transform on this news.

But again the size of this deal has been overstated in the context of globalized gas markets. According to the BP Statistical Review, Chinese natural gas consumption in 2012 was 143.8 billion cubic meters (bcm). If this deal had been struck two years ago, the 38 bcm per year that Russia has agreed to supply to China would have accounted for almost 27 percent of demand.

However, gas may not start flowing until 2020, and Chinese energy demand is rising year over year. Natural gas will begin to catch up with coal in the country's energy mix — according to projections by China's national oil company. By 2020 the Russian gas will only count for 19 percent of demand and by 2030 only 7 percent.

Dr. Keun-Wook Paik, one of the most knowledgeable experts on this issue, has argued that the deal may provide the basis for an expansion of exports in more significant quantities. But this is not a foregone conclusion; China has other options for energy supplies, from Central Asia and Myanmar by pipeline, or from further afield as liquefied natural gas (LNG).

In 2013, China imported 24.4 bcm from Turkmenistan along a pipeline that is already in place. In the longer term (although the challenges are great), a copycat Chinese shale revolution could further disrupt any such plans.

Russian literary giant Fyodor Dostoevsky once said that "the Russian soul is a dark place," and on the back of May's events Westerners have been having another go at unraveling the enigma of Putin.

His apparently aggressive external policies have brought the inevitable comparisons to Nazi Germany (even Prince Charles appears to encourage the opinion). Putin is not an easy customer, but we must distinguish between the crazed expansionist we fear and a typically corrupt 21st-century leader looking out for his country's energy security and his own survival as a statesman.

Yes, the timing of this deal was designed as a political snub to the West. But this is no "Grand Alliance" of powers. The West's sanctions have merely served as a catalyst for a deal that has been on the table for a decade and may have been made in any case.

There is no guarantee that it will expand to anything more substantial than the entry of one more gas supplier into a gas-hungry Asian market that any producer can all take advantage of, if the price is right.