We are transitioning from the pandemic crisis to the post-pandemic turmoil. We dodged the first bullet. Here comes the next. We are led alas, by the worst political and cultural elite the West has seen in a hundred years.
Maybe the best way to defend Hong Kong and Taiwan is to rebuild America. That would present a tremendous, but nonkinetic competitive threat to Beijing. They could not afford to get bogged down in Hong Kong and Taiwan. If you want to lose HK, choose "managed decline".
This indirect strategy of reconstruction has a better chance of preserving the peace than one of appeasement which will only incentivize an eventual threat on Taiwan or Luzon, catastrophically pulling in Japan and possibly Australia.
