It is getting way past time to recognize that the Great Experiment has failed, and failed miserably. The concept was that open exchange, trade, and information

It is getting way past time to recognize that the Great Experiment has failed, and failed miserably. The concept was that open exchange, trade, and information flow would result in open societies. In fact, the reverse happened — it strengthened the hand of the expansionist authoritarian governments. Now, the '-isms' (communism, fascism, etc.) have all been stripped, and it is literally open war on democracies by the authoritarian states. Russia is waging open genocide in Ukraine and threatening the Baltics, Poland and Germany, China is openly violating it's agreements on Hong Kong, militarily threatening Taiwan and everyone around it's "9-dashed-line", and brutalizing it's own citizens as they protest. Iran & North Korea similarly threatening. In the economic sphere, their entire repertoire is to steal as much IP as possible and cheat their way into the markets. It is far past time to recognize that we are playing for a few quarters of better profits while they are playing to literally destroy the democracies to they can take what they want. The only proper response is to condition our economic engagement on the implementation of democracy. You want access to our markets? Fine, open your political systems, stop being a threat, and we'll trade. Until then, it's a full embargo. Aside from the overt military threats, I literally don't go several hours at a time without seeing more stories of how people in democratic countries are being routinely and systematically cheated by the Chinese, or how they are maintaining "Chinese police auxiliary stations" in democratic countries (why is this permitted?) to threaten their own diaspora. There are surely good people in every country, but that fact does not make it worth the costs of interacting with those societies.