The End of the Last, Best Chance
Last week the American ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, attempted to publish an op-ed with his assessment of American-Chinese relations. The Chinese Communist Part summarily squashed it, [...]
A Failure of Leadership, Part III: The Beginning of the End of China
Read Part 1 and Part 2 The Chinese are intentionally torching their diplomatic relationships with the wider world. The question is why? The short version is that China’s spasming belligerency is [...]
A Failure of Leadership, Part II: How To Lose Friends and Mobilize People Against You
Read Part 1 and Part 3 The propaganda out of China of late has been…notable. Beijing has accused the French of using their nursing homes as death camps, has blamed Italy for being the source of [...]
A Failure of Leadership, Part I: A Look Around the World
Read Part 2 and Part 3 The past few weeks have been…eventful. I make my living anticipating and explaining and projecting change, with an unfortunate emphasis on destabilizing and disintegrative [...]
Coronavirus
Four things have popped up in the past 48 hours that are worth a look. First, we now have enough preliminary data to say some general things about the virus and the news is good: the virus is [...]
Gasoline on the Trade War Fire
Something happened yesterday with the Trump transition that worried me. By “worry” I mean it is great for me personally, but as I’m a bit of a purveyor of doom and gloom, [...]
At the Edge of Disorder
Last week, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump shook the global diplomatic community to its bedrock by throwing the One China policy into doubt, specifically noting, “I don’t know why [...]