https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/12/trumps-foreign-policy-deals-properly-with-tyrants/
Trump’s coddling of the dictatorial mind is not capitulation but a steely eyed gambit to get part—he hopes all, or a lot, but at least some—of what he and what the United States wants.
Over at PJ Media, my friend Roger L. Simon makes some sage observations about the proper conduct of foreign policy among great powers in general and, in particular, about the behavior of President Trump with respect to this important arena of human endeavor.
Roger’s first point has two parts, a strophe, as it were, and an antistrophe.
The strophe involves a patent moral dimension. We should not conceal—from others or from ourselves—the moral caliber of the leaders with whom we deal. Besides the United States, the world’s only other colossus is China. Not only does it preside over the second largest economy in the world, it is also eagerly and aggressively arming itself and asserting its prerogatives throughout Asia and, increasingly, throughout the world.
Moreover, China has a dismal human rights record, a fact that is daily bruited about the Western world by reports of China’s savage treatment of the Uyghurs, for example, their efforts to create a surveillance state by imposing a system of “social credit” on its citizens, and its militant treatment of the protestors in Hong Kong.
Last week’s flood of stories about the craven behavior of the National Basketball Association, Nike, Apple, and other American business interests that talk woke but act like hypocrites when their bottom line is threatened has simply reinforced what we all knew about those horrible people (I mean those running Apple, Nike, etc.) They wear bluejeans and eschew ties, they talk about love and “saving the environment,” but they instantly kowtow to tyrannical hegemons the moment it will aid their balance sheet.
