You don’t need a degree in international affairs to understand the message Xi Jinping sent Wednesday as he paraded tanks, hypersonic missiles and other weapons through Beijing, putatively to honor the end of World War II. Mr. Xi and his allies aspire to dethrone the U.S. as the world’s premier power. What will President Trump do about it?
Mr. Xi’s friendly photo-op with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un was an ominous image for the free world. An axis of U.S. adversaries is alive and well, and Mr. Trump’s return to power didn’t dent their expanding cooperation. Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers are preoccupied with peeling apart Messrs. Xi and Putin, in a spin on Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972. But Nixon exploited a split with the Soviets that already existed, and this week’s camaraderie is a reminder there’s no such rift now.
Beijing’s choice to flex its military power on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II is notable. The axis of adversaries wants to tell a new story of the world since 1945, diminishing the singular U.S. role in ending that war and building the order that followed. The revisionist history is part of a larger ambition to rearrange the global balance of power.
Mr. Trump seems to grasp some of this. On social media he wrote that Mr. Xi should “give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States.” He said Wednesday in the Oval Office that “they were hoping I was watching — and I was watching.”
Yet what’s Mr. Trump’s strategy? He hopes his personal diplomacy can help strike deals with different dictators on different issues. But America’s adversaries are united, while Mr. Trump hits U.S. allies with a tariff barrage.
The parade is also a wake-up call about the balance of military power. Mr. Xi showed off everything from undersea vehicles to new intercontinental ballistic missiles. He’s building a military that can get what it wants when it decides to move, and don’t think his ambitions stop at swallowing the vital U.S. friend Taiwan.
Mr. Trump keeps bragging about the great American military while doing little to make it even all that good again. He isn’t proposing a real defense buildup or a multiyear increase in spending. It’s an open question this month whether a dysfunctional Congress will get the Pentagon a full budget, rather than more stopgap funding that carves up military readiness.
If Mr. Trump doesn’t get serious, he’s putting the U.S. in a position to lose a shooting war that this axis of adversaries seems increasingly willing to entertain. This week’s parade in Beijing is an opening for the Commander in Chief to tell Americans that putting serious money toward the U.S. military is a better option than ceding the world to Messrs. Xi, Putin and Kim.
