AUKUS is Australia’s message to China that the Western alliance is strong. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin aren’t buying it

The meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin proves the end of the so-called rules based order. The leaders of China and Russia can thumb their noses at the “order”. They can boast of their friendship, strengthen their trade ties, embed their own diplomacy and seek to build their own networks of power in defiance of Washington and its allies. They may as well be saying: Just try to stop us! Like it or not, this is not a unipolar world, it is a multipolar world. It is not a Western order, it is a contested order — brutally contested….