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Opinion: China is testing the West. We shouldn’t back down
- vanusa 5y agoThe best way to demonstrate to China that tantrums and bullying won’t work is to continue apace with our efforts to build up our alliances and capability to keep the region free — including readiness to come to Taiwan’s defense, if necessary. What's distasteful about this piece is that -- aside from the fact that it seems very doubtful at this point that the U.S. public would stomach more than a token response (that is to say: symbolic, but ultimately ineffective) to an actual invasion -- it attempts to infantilize Beijing's actions as "tantrums". They are not. The CPC leadership is engaging in calculated realpolitik in the classic mold -- by and large, quite skillfully. To pretend otherwise -- or that the U.S. can prevail against their strategy with nothing more than bluffing manoeuvres in its hand; backed perhaps by some vague sense of "adult in the room" superiority -- is naive and dangerous.