Beijing alliance highlights Trump failure and threat of world war

WHAT should we read into the military parade in Beijing before the eyes of the three comrades, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un? Could the display of China’s military might be construed as a threat to the US? (“China puts its power on parade”, Scottish Daily Express, September 4). We should also reflect upon Putin’s unconcern with Donald Trump’s increasingly empty bluster about imposing further sanctions on Russia for its continued assaults on Ukraine - defiance seen in the doubling of his efforts to bring Ukraine to breaking point. And North Korea’s dispatch of troops to bolster Putin’s aggression against a tiring Ukrainian army tells us Kim is cocking a snook at the White House. Xi’s remark that the US must choose between peace or confrontation makes a mockery of the deal-maker extraordinaire, with the military heft at China’s disposal. This show of strength in Beijing underlines the weak position of the US and its uncomfortable allies in the current framework of world politics. How close are we to Third World War thanks to the failure of Trump to come to terms with the international problems dogging him in Ukraine, Gaza and the South China Sea?

- Denis Bruce

WHAT should we read into the military par