To ask the question is to answer it!

Roger Kimball writes in American Greatness,

...But suppose an American president was interested in helping out the people who live in this part of China. What should he do? Threaten the president of China? (Threaten what, by the way? War?) Or should he make soothing noises, saying that he is sure that the Chinese leader will step up and do the right thing all the while, nota bene, continuing U.S. tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese goods?

Some of my friends have said Donald Trump should be acting more as Ronald Reagan acted in his interactions with Mikhail Gorbachev. Maybe. But it is worth noting that Reagan’s relations with the leader of the Soviet Union were not all “tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev.” They also involved a lot of blandishments, including visits to Moscow and Washington. Was all that noise? Or part of the signal that brought the Cold War to a bloodless end? Just a day or two ago, Trump suggested that President Xi go to talk to the protestors in Hong Kong. This happened even as Xi had scores of Chinese troop-carrying trucks massing on the border. Some people thought that Trump was wrong to take so mild an approach. Maybe. But maybe his combination of strong actions in the form of tariffs and, more generally, a demand for fair trade, coupled with emollient, face-saving rhetoric will be effective.

At any rate, the situation in China reminds me of one of the political philosopher James Burnham’s famous political laws: Where there is no alternative there is no problem. What’s the alternative to Donald Trump on any of these issues? Joe Biden? Elizabeth Warren? Bernie Sanders? To ask the question is to answer it.

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