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\n President Donald Trump is mad that China is palling around with his strongmen friends.\n <\/p>\n
\n Trump erupted on social media late Tuesday night \u2014 US time \u2014 as television footage aired of Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosting the authoritarian leaders of Russia and North Korea at a stunning military parade in Beijing<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cPlease give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America,\u201d Trump wrote<\/a> in a message to Xi.\n <\/p>\n \n The Truth Social post heard around the world means one thing: If China\u2019s two big gatherings of authoritarian leaders, US adversaries and erstwhile allies this week was intended as a personal affront to the US president, it worked perfectly. And it underscored the futility of his attempts to subject the true global hard men to his art-of-the-deal charms and his claims that his supposedly close relationships with such leaders can be decisive.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump met with Putin in Alaska last month, but his gushing red-carpet welcome<\/a> has so far failed to unlock any progress toward ending the war in Ukraine. Putin has defied Trump\u2019s hopes by escalating attacks on civilians and is stalling on talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a>. The US president\u2019s first-term summits with Kim were similarly unsuccessful. The North Korean leader has more nuclear weapons now than he did before taking part in Trump\u2019s photo-op diplomacy.\n <\/p>\n \n The president\u2019s online tirade went on to point out that Americans had suffered heavy losses in the struggle against a common enemy, imperial Japan, the 80th anniversary of whose defeat was marked in Beijing on Wednesday.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMany Americans died in China\u2019s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice!\u201d Trump wrote.\n <\/p>\n \n China\u2019s big celebration<\/a> comes at a tense international moment as the new Asian superpower seeks to capitalize on Trump\u2019s erratic foreign policy, which has shattered America\u2019s reputation as a reliable great power.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s fury was ironic, since the last few days in China have seen the kind of performative spectacle that he loves.\n <\/p>\n \n But the gathering of anti-Western powers in Tianjin and Beijing is about more than trolling. It\u2019s an early warning that Trump\u2019s second-term policies based on tariff coercion, the bullying of lesser powers and \u201cAmerica First\u201d nationalism may be backfiring.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cChina is leveraging the missteps or mistakes that the US (is making),\u201d Jackie S.H. Wong, an assistant professor of international studies at the American University of Sharjah, told CNN\u2019s Becky Anderson on \u201cConnect the World\u201d Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n \n Some of the alarmist talk about China and Russia building a new axis of resistance to the US is overblown. Nations represented at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit<\/a> in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin lack formal defense agreements or pooled economic sovereignty to compare to groups like NATO or the European Union.\n <\/p>\n \n Territorial tensions periodically spark between China and India. Moscow might need China\u2019s help in fighting its war in Ukraine, but the Kremlin is still getting used to being the junior superpower. And despite Communist Party iron rule, China suffers from internal political and economic pressures, demonstrated by Xi\u2019s regular purges of top officials and military brass.\n <\/p>\n \n But the festivities of recent days are part of China\u2019s wider effort to showcase its emerging might and to test out alternative global affiliations and systems as it seeks to eclipse the West. By gathering leaders from Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere, it was demonstrating the capacity of a bloc to frustrate US global power on multiple fronts.\n <\/p>\n \n One top US military leader on Tuesday downplayed the significance of events in China.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cNations like China and North Korea and Russia, and others do these kind of events. There\u2019s certainly a big focus on messaging,\u201d Gen. Kevin Schneider, commander of the US Pacific Air Forces, told an online talk Tuesday.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cBut I think the takeaway for this is we are not deterred,\u201d Schneider said.\n <\/p>\n \n A lot of this predates Trump.\n <\/p>\n \n Eight decades after the end of World War II, it\u2019s not surprising that institutions born in the aftermath of the horror need a reboot. The rise of populous developing nations was always going to threaten American hegemony and the global system built and dominated by the West. And as the last members of the Greatest Generation fade away, the triumph of the democracies in World War II is becoming history rather than a tangible human memory.\n <\/p>\n \n But Trump\u2019s choices in the first eight months of his second term are accelerating a shift of global power to the East. They\u2019re playing into Xi\u2019s quest to revive what he believes is China\u2019s rightful global prominence. Trump\u2019s attacks on allies and desecration of US foreign aid programs are brewing resentment among erstwhile American friends who are now hedging their bets with an alternative superpower.\n <\/p>\n \n Incredibly, the force doing most to undermine the West is the president of the country \u2014 the United States \u2014 that guaranteed freedom and democracy for generations.\n <\/p>\n \n Many steps that Trump takes to demonstrate US power end up undermining it.\n <\/p>\n \n By taking on Beijing in a massive trade offensive<\/a>, Trump picked on the one nation that would be ready to absorb economic pain <\/strong>to damage the US. Now, Trump has found that Beijing has, well, a trump card: control of a large share of rare earth metals that the US needs to run its tech industry and military applications. Trump\u2019s failure to force Beijing to back down is enhancing a sense that it\u2019s ready to challenge American might \u2014 and drawing foreign leaders to Beijing.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s capricious tariff attacks<\/a> on US trading partners \u2014 based on his hunches rather than economic data \u2014 and attempts to throttle the independence of the Federal Reserve<\/a> play into China\u2019s previously unconvincing claims that it, and not the United States, is the stable superpower on which partners can rely. Nations represented in Tianjin, for example, included many that looked to Washington rather than Beijing in recent years, including Vietnam \u2014 which is facing tough US tariffs<\/a> \u2014Egypt, and NATO member Turkey.\n <\/p>\n \n The most startling example of Trump\u2019s clumsy, counterproductive behavior shone through the attention lavished throughout the summit in Tianjin on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a fellow populist nationalist leader and erstwhile friend of Trump. Trump\u2019s claims to have solved a flare-up between India and Pakistan earlier this year and demands for the Nobel Peace Prize infuriated Modi. A 50% tariff on Indian imports to the US fractured nearly 30 years of efforts by Republican and Democratic presidents to prevent India and China \u2014 which are home to a billion people each \u2014 from moving closer together.\n <\/p>\n \n Laughing<\/a> and shaking hands, Xi and Modi<\/a> both argued their two countries, long separated by mistrust, could be partners and not rivals.\n <\/p>\n \n Modi\u2019s interaction with a jovial Putin was even more overt. Last month, the Russian leader had a private chat in Trump\u2019s Beast limousine at their summit in Alaska. In China, Putin one-upped Trump, inviting Modi into his ride, and a photographer was on hand to capture the friendly hourlong chat inside<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Xi\u2019s welcome to Modi matched that of Putin.\n <\/p>\n \n India is \u201csignaling to the US that \u2018we have alternatives, and China can be that alternative,\u2019\u201d Wong told Anderson on CNN International.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI would say China is leveraging that opportunity.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s misstep is more surprising since he jelled with Modi during his first term. But India is a deeply proud nation whose colonial history makes it especially sensitive to being bullied. It is hyper-touchy about anything to do with its arch-rival Pakistan. Such subtleties seem to escape the White House. Perhaps Trump\u2019s purge of State Department experts<\/a> is taking a toll.\n <\/p>\n \n Russia is often portrayed in the West as a decrepit power; a shadow of the Soviet Union despite its vast nuclear arsenal. There\u2019s some truth to this after 25 years of Putin\u2019s corrupt rule. But the Russian leader buttressed his image in defying Trump.\n <\/p>\n \n This has left the US president expressing disappointment and resorting to his classic tactic of teasing apparently imminent announcements to spare his embarrassment. He told reporters Tuesday he\u2019d spoken to Putin and \u201clearned things that will be very interesting. I think in the next few days, you\u2019ll find out.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Many foreign policy experts thought a shrewd second term goal for Trump would be to push US adversaries like Russia, China and North Korea apart. Instead, he\u2019s driven them together, and driven India, a member of the US \u201cQuad\u201d grouping with Australia and Japan, closer into their orbit.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s supporters dispute any characterization of his foreign policy as anything but a roaring success. The White House argues that the United States has never been more respected in the world. It bills Trump as the \u201cPresident of Peace\u201d and claims he\u2019s ended seven global wars<\/a> \u2014 even though some of the nations it names weren\u2019t fighting each other when Trump intervened.\n <\/p>\n \n The president told CNN contributor Scott Jennings on his radio show on Tuesday that he wasn\u2019t concerned at all by the diplomatic signaling coming from China.\n <\/p>\n \n He also implied in a conversation with reporters in the Oval Office that Xi would be forced to capitulate. \u201cChina needs us. And I have a very good relationship with President Xi, as you know. But China needs us much more than we need them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Meanwhile, Trump is making overt attempts to prove he\u2019s as tough as any global strongman.\n <\/p>\n \n On Monday, as superpower diplomacy played out across the Pacific, he announced a US strike that killed 11 people in the seas off Venezuela<\/a>, which officials said targeted drug traffickers. The attack could herald a military campaign on questionable legal ground regarding congressional authorization.\n <\/p>\n \n He also re-upped threats to send National Guard reservists into Chicago<\/a> as he methodically escalates his effort to normalize the use of the military in law enforcement despite constitutional curbs. But there was a reminder that despite his authoritarian instincts, the United States still has democratic safeguards that Russia and China lacks when a judge ruled that his dispatch of federal troops<\/a> to Los Angeles earlier this year was illegal.\n <\/p>\n![\"President](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/gettyimages-2228103890-20250902005219126.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Russian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/ap25246082202586.jpg\")
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