Yes, showing the flag and having the President interact with counterparts is an important part of diplomacy, at the highest level. It has impact because it shows that the U.S. cares about allies and partners, that the U.S. values this relationship and will be there for allies and partners, regardless of the cost.

So, Mr. Trump’s visit to the region was more than tariffs and trade. It was about relationships that principally deal with national security,

Mr. Trump’s meetings with Japan’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, and South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung were particularly noteworthy. The U.S. and Japan signed security and economic measures – and a Memorandum of Cooperation – to expand cooperation on shipbuilding and critical-minerals supply chains, an apparent initiative to reduce reliance on China for rare earth and other critical minerals. More importantly, it established a relationship with Japan’s new prime minister that will ensure we remain close allies.

With South Korea, U.S. approval to develop nuclear-powered submarines using U.S. technology and facilities was a major U.S. decision, with South Korea joining a select few states that operate nuclear-propulsion submarines. There are a few particulars related to the fuel and safeguard agreements that will have to be addressed, but the bottom line is that South Korea, within a few years, will have nuclear-powered submarines (with conventional weapons), a major enhancement of their deterrent capabilities. South Korea also committed to purchasing large quantities of U.S. energy – oil and gas – and a $350 billion trade and investment agreement.

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The highly touted meeting of Mr. Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping was important because it happened, while underwhelming for the substantive progress. Yes, China did agree to resume purchasing U.S. soybeans and agreed to suspend planned export restrictions on rare earth minerals for one year, while also committing to greater cooperation on the trafficking of fentanyl precursor chemicals into the U.S. In return, the U.S. reduced tariffs on Chinese products from 57% to 47%.

The U.S. also said it discussed the possible sale of U.S. computer chips to China, although not the newest AI chips. For many, Mr. Trump’s announcement that he will visit China in April 2026, with a subsequent trip to the U.S. by Mr. Xi was welcomed by many, hoping that a more robust dialogue with China would be in our respective countries’ interest.

Interestingly, there was no mention of Taiwan or potential conflict in the South China Sea. Apparently, the Trump-Xi meeting dealt exclusively with trade and fentanyl-related issues. Or, if these issues were discussed, both agreed that there would be no public statement documenting these discussions.

Mr. Trump’s visit to Malaysia, Japan and South Korea was an important visit of a U.S. president who prides himself on being a peacemaker. In Malaysia Mr. Trump witnessed the signing of a peace accord between Cambodia and Thailand that he personally brokered. Indeed, that’s how Mr. Trump started his five-day trip to East Asia. He ended it with a request that the U.S. and China help end the war in Ukraine. This has been a heavy lift for the U.S. and Mr. Trump personally, who tried to end this war. It’s also a challenge for China, given that China continues to buy Russian oil, and reportedly provides machine tools, semiconductors and other dual-use items that help Russia rebuild its defense industry.

Mr. Trump’s trip to East Asia was a success, especially for what he accomplished in South Korea and Japan.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times

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OPINION — Last week’s Fourth Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party witnessed a purge of China’s senior military leaders, culminating in over two years of the removal of senior military officials once loyal to President Xi Jinping.

The last two defense ministers – Wei Feng he and Li Shangfu – were removed in October 2023 and June 2024. And now, He Wei Dong, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) was expelled from the Party and Military for “serious violations of Party discipline.” Admiral Miao Hua, Director of the CMC’s Political Work Department (responsible for the political/ideological work in the military) was removed from the CMC in June 2025 and later officially expelled.

The list goes on and on: Lin Xiangyang, Former Commander of the Eastern Theatre Command; Wang Houbin, Former Commander of the PLA Rocket Force; Wang Chunning, Former Commander of the People’s Armed Police. These are just three of eight or nine senior military officers purged in October 2025.

Purges of senior officials are not new to China. On July 1, 1989, Zhao Ziyang was removed as the Party’s General Secretary -- and Vice Chairman of the CMC -- for supporting the students during the June 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, and on July 1, 1987, Hu Yaobang was removed as the Party’s General Secretary for supporting the students who were demanding more democracy. Deng Xiaoping accused Mr. Hu, a former protégé of his, of “bourgeoise liberalization.”

And in 1971, Lin Biao, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and his wife, Ye Qun, planned the assassination of Chairman Mao Zedong, to replace Mao as the supreme leader. The plot was discovered and Lin Biao died in an airplane crash as he was fleeing for his life.

Many of the recently purged generals, including He Weidong and Admiral Miao Hua, worked in the 31st Group Army stationed in Fujian Province during the 1970s and 80s. This region is the front line for any potential military operation against Taiwan. In fact, He Weidong later served as commander of the Eastern Theatre Command from 2019 to 2022, the unit responsible for operations concerning Taiwan.

General He was a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo and Vice Chairman of the CMC, the third highest-ranking military official in China. His professional prominence was also due to his association with Xi Jinping, but in October 2025, General He and eight others senior military officers were expelled from the Communist Party and the military. They in fact were referred for criminal prosecution on charges of corruption and “serious violations of discipline and law.”

General He and the other purged generals all had connections to Fujian and the former Eastern Theatre Command commander Lin Xiangyang and Navy Admiral Miao Hua. It would be fair to assume that these senior military officers disagreed with some of Mr. Xi’s policies toward Taiwan.

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Given the importance of Taiwan for Mr. Xi and the Communist Party, a disagreement with seniors in the military over Taiwan could develop into an issue that affects the inner workings of the Party. Mr. Xi has consistently refused to renounce the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and continues to conduct military exercises near Taiwan. Mr. Xi maintains, however, that “peaceful reunification” is preferable but reserves the option of using force, particularly in response to “external forces” or “separatist activities” in Taiwan.

Hopefully, Mr. Xi will pursue a policy of peaceful reunification with Taiwan and immediately halt military exercises and related activities to intimidate Taiwan.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.

“Dictators,” Churchill observed, “ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount.” “And,” he added, “the tigers are getting hungry.”

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION -- Churchill penned those words when mankind was on the precipice of what would be the most devastating conflict in human history. The men who took it over the edge - Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and a leadership in Japan that would increasingly take on the characteristics of a military dictatorship under men such as General Hideki Tojo - were driven by ambition; animus for their enemies, real, imagined and contrived; and a will to use any means at their disposal to ensure their countries assumed what they saw as their rightful places in the world.

The leaders of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan took their countries into war because of conditions they had fomented. Cynically exploiting political radicalization, economic pressures, and societal fervor stoked by authoritarian leadership and militarist-nationalist ideology, they dismantled democratic institutions – thus removing the brakes on both repression and aggression - and promulgated pervasive propaganda that created a climate where war appeared both inevitable and justified.

Once at war, they desperately clung to their illusions of national greatness and delusions of personal grandeur as their countrymen were killed, their nations devastated and their militaries defeated. In the end; with Hitler’s suicide in a dank bunker; the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress hanging in a Milan square; and Tojo’s drop through a trapdoor with a hangman’s noose around his neck; the tigers feasted.

The nature of the relationship among the Axis powers of the Second World War is worth considering within the context of the recent meeting of the leaders of the ‘Axis of Autocracies’ in Beijing. The extension by Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping of invitations to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit and a massive military parade celebrating the end of the Second World War to Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was in keeping with Xi’s intent to send a signal of unity in opposition to the so-called ‘rules-based’ international order dominated by the U.S. Further, the Chinese leader will have seen the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Erdogan among some twenty invitees to the Beijing festivities – coming, as they did, amid trade tensions with Washington and with the 2027 deadline he has set for his military to be ready to act against Taiwan nearing - as evidence his message is finding broader resonance.

"Global governance,” Xi said, “has reached a new crossroads." The new order he envisions would, the Chinese leader said in comments clearly directed at the U.S., “take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practice true multilateralism."

What he did not say, and did not need to say, was that his country and party would be at the center of a realignment of global power that would bear little similarity to the current world order for which the Chinese leader has nothing but contempt.

As China has long demonstrated, it has no regard for adherence to norms of behavior that the failed U.S. policy of engagement was intended to promote. Indeed, its aggressive and expansionist policies vis-à-vis its neighbors; its disregarding of treaty obligations in the case of Hong Kong; its resort to influence operations to suborn foreign governments and international institutions; its exploitation of Belt and Road initiative projects that turn recipients into debtor nations; its use of espionage means to steal the intellectual property and national wealth from rival nations, their businesses and industries; and its brutal repression of political opponents and ethnic minorities demonstrate that Beijing neither recognizes nor accepts any international rules of conduct.

While North Korea and Iran play lesser, supporting roles in this Axis, the relationship with between Russia and China is central to Xi’s desire to put together a global system of strategic and economic ties that supersedes the post-war, U.S.-dominated world order.

Xi’s message clearly resonated with Putin. Addressing his Chinese counterpart as “dear friend,” the Russian President said that Moscow’s ties with Beijing are “at an unprecedentedly high level.” Citing Soviet assistance to China during the war, going on that: “We were always together then, we remain together now.” Putin’s avowals of what he would have termed ‘fraternal friendship’ in his earlier life notwithstanding, Russia likely sees its reliance on Beijing for support as being driven by the necessities of the Ukraine war and surely does not envision long-term dependence on China.

However, what Putin also surely understands - if Xi did not make the point explicitly clear to him in conversations between the two - is that the state of the Ukraine war is a significant factor in the timing and nature of Chinese planning for ‘reunification’ of Taiwan with the mainland insofar as it serves to distract and diffuse any Western – read U.S. – response to such an undertaking.

Consequently, there is every incentive for Beijing to ensure there is no resolution of that war prior to any move it makes against Taiwan. In such an instance, the U.S. would find itself having to contend with China backed by Russia should it choose to counter a move by Xi to seize the island. It is, of course, unclear what form Beijing-Moscow war-time cooperation would take. But ties between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan might be instructive in this regard.

As is the case with relations between Moscow and Beijing today, the connection between the two most powerful Axis powers was rooted in a desire to undo the existing – then Anglo-American and now U.S. led - world order. Germany and Japan fought their war as ostensible allies. But it was a strangely distant union. They were bound together more by de facto strategic interdependence than by formal alliance. The two countries did sign a series of compacts. Chief among these were 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact (according to which both parties agreed to work against the Soviet-directed ‘Comintern’, or Communist International), and the Tripartite Pact of 1940, establishing an “Axis” alliance which also included Italy.

There were also several supporting economic and military cooperation agreements, the most significant of which was the "No Separate Peace” agreement of 11 December 1941. Signed following U.S. entry into the war, it formalized joint prosecution of the war against the U.S. and Britain by the Axis, pledging that the signatories would not seek a separate peace without mutual consent.

These arrangements were integral to the wartime calculations of Germany and Japan. But none of them formally bound either country to come to the aid of the other in event of war. Moreover, their ability and willingness to develop and implement a joint strategy for waging the war was hampered by geographical distance, divergent interests, and occasionally conflicting operational priorities.

There is, for instance, no evidence that the timing of Tokyo’s December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor was coordinated with Berlin. The attack’s timing was primarily dictated by Japan’s urgent need to break U.S.-led embargoes and secure critical resources, rather than a calculated move to exploit any German "distraction" of the Allies.

But Germany’s war in Europe did create opportunity for Japan in the Asia-Pacific by significantly weakening the Western colonial presence in the region, indirectly making a Japanese attack more viable and thus influencing Tokyo’s risk calculus.

With major Western powers preoccupied—Britain fully engaged in Europe and North Africa, and the U.S. focused on supporting Britain and preparing for possible conflict—Japanese leaders judged that the Western colonial powers in Asia (Britain, the Netherlands, and France) were vulnerable to rapid Japanese offensives. That assessment enhanced Japan’s confidence in the success of those operations but was not the determining factor in their timing.

Moreover, Hitler’s declaration of war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor puzzled Allied leaders and historians since given America’s massive industrial potential; his own experience in the First World War when entry of America into the war tipped the balance against Germany; and the fact that Tokyo did not join the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, a non-decision that allowed Stalin to shift reserves from Siberia to confront the German army threatening Moscow.

It appears the German dictator declared war on the U.S. - even though the declaration removed any remaining obstacles to full American involvement against him in Europe - primarily because he thought war with America inevitable, wanted to unleash his U-Boats on ships carrying Lend-Lease material to Britain, and sought to present the Axis as a united front. He also saw the U.S. as a decadent, racially mixed nation and underestimated its capacity to quickly gear up for war, believing Germany could defeat the Allies before significant American power could be brought to bear. His decision proved a crucial strategic blunder as it unified America’s population and industries behind a total war effort that was ultimately decisive.

The February 2022 promulgation of a “Partnership Without Limits” by Xi and Putin on the margins of the Winter Olympics not only signaled a warming of relations between their countries. It also implied at least tacit Chinese backing for the Russian invasion of Ukraine that occurred just a few days later.

As was the case with the Axis powers, that announcement was presaged by other agreements between Beijing and Moscow. The establishment of formal diplomatic ties after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the 2001 signing of a ‘Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation’ set the stage for strategic, economic, and security collaboration between the two countries. Over the following years, they resolved border disputes, held joint military exercises, expanded energy trade, and cooperated within such international organizations as the SCO.

While ties between Russia and China on economic, diplomatic and military matters have deepened, the relationship – as was the case with the Axis - is marked more by a joint desire to challenge the U.S. than by deep mutual affinity. Despite declarations in the 2022 joint statement that the friendship between the two countries “has no limits” and that there are “no forbidden areas of cooperation,” Putin is no doubt well aware that Xi has other motives in supporting Russia.

Not least among them are using the Ukraine war to draw down Western military stockpiles and taking advantage of Moscow’s relative loss of influence in Central Asia. And Russia remains deeply wary of Chinese strategic intentions and intelligence activities. Notably, recently leaked Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) documents indicate Moscow’s growing concern over Chinese espionage targeting Russian military, scientific, and geopolitical assets. The FSB has labeled China as an "enemy" and initiated counterintelligence programs designed to counter aggressive Chinese recruitment of Russian scientists, officials, and businessmen—especially those with access to sensitive state institutions.

Like the (successful) intelligence operations mounted by Stalin’s Soviet Union against its erstwhile Western allies during World War Two, Chinese intelligence has intensified its attempts to gain insight into Russia’s military operations in Ukraine and its knowledge of Western combat systems.

The FSB has documented Chinese front organizations—including corporate and academic groups—seeking access to information on Russian technological advancements, as well as covert Chinese activities in the Arctic and Russia’s Far East. Moscow has responded by restricting the access of foreign researchers, monitoring users of Chinese platforms like WeChat, and increasing face-to-face warnings to vulnerable officials. These security concerns underscore the reality of the relationship: while Russia and China publicly coordinate on economic and military fronts, deep mutual suspicion and competing strategic ambitions complicate their alliance.

In spurring his country towards war, Hitler exploited economic instability, the national humiliation of the Versailles Treaty, fears of internal enemies in the form of Jews and communists, and a desire to restore German national power by re-building the military and expanding the country to develop a totalitarian, militarized, racially pure state under a supreme leader able to act decisively in his quest to dominate Europe.

The German dictator seized on an opportunity to play on what he rightly perceived as weakness on the part of his potential adversaries to fulfill his dark version of his country’s national destiny. Likewise, the leaders of Imperial Japan exerted enormous influence over the country’s domestic and foreign policy, seizing an opportunity to press for an expansionist war to address economic pressures and resource scarcity. Often acting independently of - and sometimes overruling - civilian authorities, the militarists used propaganda, suppression of political dissent and racialist exhortations to national destiny to justify expansionary war as the only viable path to Japanese strength and salvation, as well as their own power.

Similarly, both Xi and Putin are driven by imperatives; in their cases – assuming their revealing conversation about organ harvesting and eternal life was just aspirational – in the form of actuarial calendars. The former has committed to resolving the Taiwan issue during his time as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary. And the latter undertook the Ukraine invasion as part of an effort to restore Russian power and influence world-wide, but particularly in the former Soviet “the near abroad,” while at the helm in the Kremlin. Both are building up their militaries – Putin out of immediate necessity and Xi to actualize expansionist aspirations - while stoking nationalism to at once garner support for those endeavors and to defray potential domestic threats to their rule.

Although Xi maintains a strong grip on power as China’s paramount leader, internal tensions are rising due to the absence of a succession mechanism, demographic decline and, most importantly, increased public discontent engendered by weak economic growth, prolonged real estate market weakness, record youth unemployment, deflationary pressures, and ballooning government debt.

He faces also elite dissatisfaction fueled by his reluctance to initiate necessary market reforms. Party insiders are said to be concerned over the sustainability of the state-led model and its impact on global competitiveness, as well as the political risk of widespread public dissatisfaction in an environment where social mobility appears impossible and wealth gaps are evident.

In response, the Chinese leader has used surveillance, purges, ideological education, and anti-Western messaging to silence dissent. This approach has made him over-reliant on what the Soviets called ‘the instruments of state repression.”

Even though overt dissent is suppressed, the risk of future instability is rising beneath the surface. Unrest could rapidly appear if economic or political crises dramatically worsen. To avoid the fate of those who ruled the Soviet Union, Xi’s approach over the coming years may be shaped by the need to adapt by opening the economy to some degree to vent off steam while trying. Confronted with such circumstances, he could well be tempted to further ramp up repression while whipping up nationalist fervor around the Taiwan issue. Although adopting such a course might obscure economic difficulties and bolster his authority, it could also increase the risk of reckless foreign policy steps.

The potential for, and the possible consequences of, a rash move by Xi are increasing. China is engaged in intensifying competition that is generating friction with the U.S., especially around Taiwan, the South China Sea and the race to dominate the emerging realm of AI. Regional tensions are likewise intensifying as China’s increasingly aggressive stance has prompted growing concern and coalition-building by Japan, India, Australia and the U.S.

Pushback to China’s exploitive Belt and Road Initiative in the form of growing recipient-country debt and local resentment are complicating Beijing's ambitions and increasing its frustration.

Finally, Beijing has been impacted by American economic decoupling and sanctions. Export restrictions, technological bans, and tariffs imposed by the U.S. are beginning to bite, challenging China’s drive to seize global leadership in AI, semiconductors, and green technology.

Putin, playing on nationalist sentiment over claimed repression of ethnic Russians in Ukraine and a desire to reassert Moscow’s dominion over that nation, plunged his country into a regional war that could – like the Japanese assault on China in the 1930’s – be a prelude to a larger conflict.

The Russian leader faces mounting internal pressures as the war he unleashed grinds into its fourth year. His invasion has devolved into a slogging match that has cost his country immense amounts of blood and treasure for relatively little recompense.

Although the Kremlin has retained control through coercion, propaganda, and material incentives, challenges are surfacing from multiple directions. The costs in blood and treasure of waging a seemingly endless war are straining the economy, rising inflation, and reducing living standards. Importantly, frustration within elite circles is rising due to the costs and duration of a war waged for insufficient territorial gains.

Moreover, Russia is struggling with the spiraling costs and military overstretch of its commitment in Ukraine, which has limited its ability to project power elsewhere. The collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and Armenia’s distancing from Russia after the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have weakened Russia’s network of regional allies. Its position in Belarus and in other former Soviet states is increasingly precarious, with popular uprisings and anti-Russian sentiment rising. This, coupled with sustained Western sanctions and relative international isolation, has resulted in reduced Russian influence on the world stage.

The Kremlin continues to call its Ukraine invasion a "special military operation" rather than issuing a formal declaration of war due to fears of backlash. It has, to date, successfully isolated most of society from the war’s worst impact, suppressed dissent, and delayed difficult political choices. The Kremlin portrays all of this as the consequences of a U.S.-led proxy war targeting the Russian nation and its people. But internal pressures from war fatigue, economic strain, and elite tensions are quietly growing. And the longer the war persists without a decisive victory or settlement, the risk of cracks—in the form of elite disaffection and public unrest —will continue to rise.

Finally, like his Chinese counterpart, Putin could be tempted to engage in more external adventurism to divert attention away from the internal pressure building within his country.

Their mutual antipathy for the U.S. aside, another thing the two modern-day dictators have in common is that both are taking steps to prepare their militaries and people for possible large-scale conflict by intensifying military reforms, working to enhance readiness and developing more advanced weapons systems. Having already put his economy on a war footing, Putin is doing this both to enable operations in Ukraine and to prepare for a possible wider war.

Xi, for his part, has embarked on military modernization and shows of force such as the massive parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II to undergird his strategic messaging regarding his intent to “reunify” Taiwan with the mainland and to ready their militaries for active operations to that end if needed. Finally, China and Russia have engaged in a series of joint military exercises, including recent and upcoming naval drills in the Sea of Japan and Pacific emphasizing anti-submarine warfare, missile defense, and combined arms tactics to counter the U.S. and its allies.

Those exercises may signal something more than theater in terms of cooperation between the two militaries. But they have not shown that ties between the two countries have progressed to the point that they are prepared to implement a joint plan for waging war against the U.S.

Like their Axis forbearers, their strategic interests are likely too disparate to allow for anything more than strategic coordination in broad terms between them. This does not mean the U.S. and its allies would find it easy to confront both adversaries at once. Nazi Germany and Japan did not fight jointly, but Allied victory came at huge cost, nonetheless.

At this stage, the key question is whether, when and how Putin intends to end his assault on Ukraine. At present, the Kremlin is publicly evincing no willingness to end this war absent the achievement of at least his minimalist demands: no NATO membership for Ukraine and occupation of the four Russian-annexed regions of that country (in addition to Crimea).

If Ukraine does not cede control over those territories, it appears Putin intends to pursue a fight and negotiate strategy until his goals are achieved. However the war ends, the U.S. will then have to decide if it is prepared to try to engage Russia with an eye towards creating a rift between it and China.

With the latter on a course that appears to be inexorably leading to a confrontation with the U.S. over Taiwan, and Washington clearly preferring not to have to simultaneously deal with two adversaries on different fronts, the questions of whether, how and how soon the war in Ukraine can be ended, and what tack the Russian leader will take thereafter are of great significance to U.S. national security.

In the years since Churchill wrote about the dangers for and from dictators in riding a tiger, others have used the same analogy. Jefferson Starship even wrote a song about it. Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein cautioned all who would try it that “the first principle in riding a tiger is to hold on tight to its ears.” But it was John F. Kennedy who most succinctly addressed the perils past leaders courted by engaging in the practice. “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger,” he cautioned, “ended up inside.” One wonders how tight a grip the dictators in Beijing and Moscow have on the big cats they sit astride.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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OPINION — The recent summit of President Donald Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung further solidified a special relationship. It’s a relationship that goes back to the Korean War, when in June 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea, mistakenly thinking the U.S. was not interested in defending South Korea from an attack from the North. North Korea’s leader, Kim il Sung, was wrong. The U.S. came to the defense of South Korea and after three years of bloody fighting, with tens of thousands of casualties, an armistice was signed in July 1953, halting the fighting – but the war continues.

Given this legacy, the Trump-Lee summit had several deliverables — tariffs, trade, investments — but what understandably got the most enthusiastic attention was the prospect of Mr. Trump reengaging with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. Frankly, reengaging with North Korea and getting Mr. Kim to realize that a normal relationship with the U.S. – and hopefully with South Korea – is in North Korea’s interest should be our goal. Indeed, it would provide North Korea with international legitimacy and access to international financial institutions, and economic assistance for economic development purposes. It would be the beginning of a new era for North Korea – and the Korean Peninsula.

No doubt, Mr. Kim must have been impressed with China’s September 3^rd victory day parade celebrating the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II. Standing next to China’s President Xi Jinping as he and Russian President Vladimir Putin reviewed the military parade exhibiting China’s modernized military must have pleased Mr. Kim. The parade and the displayed comradery between Messrs Xi, Putin and Kim were on display for the world to see. The additional 26 world leaders all heard Mr. Xi’s veiled criticism of the U.S. and his pronouncement that the world faces a choice between “peace and war, or dialogue or confrontation.”

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Tianjin, China on August 31 that preceded the gala military parade in Beijing was another convenient venue for Mr. Xi, in the presence of Mr. Putin and India’s Narendra Modi and 20 world leaders, to prioritize the “Global South” – a clear veiled criticism of the U.S. and its tariff policies. Mr. Xi announced a $1.3 billion fund for the SCO development bank and a clear message: “We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practice true multilateralism.”

The message from China from these two major events -- the SCO summit and military parade -- in one week was that China is a global power and Mr. Xi is an alternative global leader, for a new world order, with its own rules, independent from Western standards.

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Unfortunately, the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska on August 15 was a failure. Despite the outreach from Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin continued to escalate the bombing of Ukraine, with continued civilian casualties. Mr. Putin then proceeded to China for the SCO Summit and the 80^th anniversary military parade in Beijing to meet and confer with Messrs Xi, Putin, Kim and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, members of the axis of authoritarian states.

Mr. Xi’s comments in Tianjin at the SCO summit and at the military parade in Beijing were clear: either a new world order that condones Russia’s invasion of a sovereign state, Ukraine, despite 1994 security assurances to Ukraine in the Budapest memorandum, or nations that continue to abide by the rule of law and respect for the sovereign rights of all countries. .

Mr. Kim’s father and grandfather wanted a normal relationship with the U.S., as did Mr. Kim, in his meetings with President Trump in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019. The talks between our countries should resume soonest, knowing that North Korea’s future is with a normal relationship with the U.S. and South Korea. The details can and will be addressed.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Joseph Detrani was first published in The Washington Times.

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