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Friday, April 10, 2020

Consider The Possibility That Trump Is Right About China

Critics are letting their disdain for the president blind them to geopolitical realities...

When a new coronavirus emerged in China and began spreading around the world, including in the United States, President Donald Trump’s many critics in the American foreign-policy establishment were quick to identify him as part of the problem.Trump had campaigned on an “America first” foreign policy, which after his victory was enshrined in the official National Security Strategy that his administration published in 2017. At the time, I served in the administration and orchestrated the writing of that document. In the years since, Trump has been criticized for supposedly overturning the post–World War II order and rejecting the role the United States has long played in the world. Amid a global pandemic, he’s being accused—on this site and elsewhere—of alienating allies, undercutting multinational cooperation, and causing America to fight the coronavirus alone.

And yet even as the current emergency has proved him right in fundamental ways—about China specifically and foreign policy more generally—many respectable people in the United States are letting their disdain for the president blind them to what is really going on in the world.

Far from discrediting Trump’s point of view, the COVID-19 crisis reveals what his strategy asserted: that the world is a competitive arena in which great power rivals like China seek advantage, that the state remains the irreplaceable agent of international power and effective action, that international institutions have limited capacity to transform the behavior and preferences of states.

China, America’s most powerful rival, has played a particularly harmful role in the current crisis, which began on its soil. Initially, that country’s lack of transparency prevented prompt action that might have contained the virus. In Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, Chinese officials initially punished citizens for “spreading rumors” about the disease. The lab in Shanghai that first published the genome of the virus on open platforms was shut down the next day for “rectification,” as the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported in February.

Apparently at the behest of officials at the Wuhan health commission, news reports indicate, visiting teams of experts from elsewhere in China were prevented from speaking freely to doctors in the infectious-disease wards.
Some experts had suspected human-to-human transmission, but their inquiries were rebuffed.

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8 comments:

  1. The only way we can proceed forward as a nation is to be lockstep with our President.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Uneducated:

      That is called Totalitarian Military Dictatorship

      Delete
  2. Of course you know that China is blaming this on the US military.

    In regards to lockstep,...do you mean over the cliff?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cliff? The President provided the example again today. China makes XXXXXXx amount off of the USA with exporting. We make XXX. Huge difference that was not in balance or as he said "fair".

    Now if one thinks that out of balance makes sense - Wow.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Our politicians sold us out to China for their gain.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Not really china! or USA! OR military!!..NO its the the luciferian global cabal of NWO freeks..banks. money..lust..power..at all cost! You mean nothing to the billengers

    ReplyDelete
  6. Not really china! or USA! OR military!!..NO its the the luciferian global cabal of NWO freeks..banks. money..lust..power..at all cost! You mean nothing to the billengers

    We standing with Trump are a very real threat to their evil agenda. They hate TRUMP GOD and and anyone who truly believes. Simply Its want its come down to. 911 ushered in the islam sword upon our heads.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The fact that China is a bad actor is not debatable.
    The issue is that the President failed to act for ten weeks and is still failing leading this calamity to be much worse then it should have been.

    ReplyDelete

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