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

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 U.S.-dominated, Western-led world order, as President Donald Trump withdraws America from many of its historic roles and roils economic relationships with tariffs.

There’s little doubt that as U.S. influence declines in the region -- militarily, economically, diplomatically – Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have moved closer together.

But there’s also evidence that the events in Beijing are simply more of the self-interested, high-level 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 neighbor.

Putin is hoping to escape Western sanctions and isolation over his war in Ukraine.

Russia looks to China to help ease its isolation.

For the Kremlin, Putin’s appearance in Beijing alongside major world leaders is another way to shrug off the isolation imposed by the West on Russia in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It has allowed Putin to take to the world stage as a statesman, meeting a host of world leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

And Putin’s reception by Xi is a reminder that Russia still has major trading partners, despite Western sanctions that have cut off access to many markets.

Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, noted that its relationship with China is critical for Russia.

“Russia is the major beneficiary of China’s ability to provide dual-use goods and all the technologies to circumvent the sanctions and keep the military machine (going). China has become the major source of Russia’s export revenues that is filling Putin’s war chest,” Gabuev said.

“For China, obviously, Russia’s war in Ukraine provides a distraction to the U.S.”