By displaying China’s growing military power, the September 3 parade aimed to intimidate adversaries, impress friends, and justify government policies. Yet, Russia’s failures in Ukraine remind us that organizing a parade and winning a war are different endeavors.

Donald Trump is threatening to retake Bagram Air Base to gain access to Afghanistan’s rich mineral deposits and to check China and other countries. It’s a costly fantasy. Trump himself signed the 2020 Doha Accord, and his about-face reveals a foreign policy driven by political revenge.

China and the United States should work to improve their crisis management mechanisms and to promote mutual trust and cooperation. In this way they can contribute to each other’s success, achieve common prosperity and bring benefits to themselves and the world.

The UN visit of Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, the leader of Syria’s transitional government who changed his name from Abu Mohammed al-Julani, demonstrates that Western countries are replacing their post-9/11 consensus on counterterrorism cooperation with a sort of narrow geopolitical logic.

The United States remains committed to global primacy. That’s been a longstanding ambition that cuts across party lines inside the Beltway. Its security doctrines, diplomatic rhetoric and military posture continue to project the image of an indispensable nation whose umbrella guarantees the survival of allies from Europe to Asia. Yet beneath this facade, a widening gap has emerged between Washington’s strategic ambitions and its material capabilities.

The new film Evil Unbound tells the story of Unit 731 and Japanese biowarfare in China. How the mass murderers escaped justice with U.S. support after World War II offers lessons even today.

Amid the broader context of its strategic retrenchment in the Middle East, Washington aims to preserve its influence without committing substantial resources, something that requires deft skills — something that Donald Trump lacks.

NATO’s Sentinel East system puts technological and strategic prowess on display and is a landmark event in the U.S.-Russia military rivalry in Europe. It represents a new inflection point in security that adds to the complexity of the Ukraine crisis.

A look at the past illuminates the way forward for China and the United States. The wartime sacrifices of millions, the heroism of Chinese and American allies and the indomitable hope for peace are not ghosts but stars pointing the way forward.

The parade, which served as both a strategic warning to would-be aggressors and an implicit commitment to peace, conveyed a clear message to the world about historical justice, the current state of the postwar international order and the future direction of world peace and development.