Was leaders’ grand display more than political jockeying?

A summit and parade in China may signal a geopolitical shift. They might also be political jockeying. Foster Klug, of Associated Press, reports

- 

Ts leaders of China, North Korea and Russia stood shoulder to shoulder on Wednesday as high-tech military hardware and thousands of marching soldiers filled the streets of Beijing.

Two days earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping huddled together, smiling broadly and clasping hands at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

The gatherings in China this week could be read as a striking, maybe even defiant, message to the United States and its allies. At the very least, they offered yet more evidence of a burgeoning shift away from a US-dominated, Western-led world order, as President Donald Trump withdraws America from many of its historic roles and roils economic relationships with tariffs.

Trump himself indicated he was the leaders’ target in a message on social media to Xi: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America.”

But China's military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, and the earlier economic gathering, is also simply more of the self-interested, diplomatic jockeying that has marked regional power politics for decades.

Each of these leaders, in other words, is out for himself.

Xi needs cheap Russian energy and a stable border with North Korea, his nuclear-armed wildcard neighbour. Putin is hoping to escape Western sanctions and isolation over his war in Ukraine. Kim wants money, legitimacy and to one-up archrival South Korea.

Modi is trying to manage his relationship with regional heavyweights Putin and Xi, at a moment when ties with Washington are troubled.