(1 of 15) MUST READ:

What power would an unconstrained China wield? What force of arms would they muster to intimidate and to control?

(2 of 15) If China’s actions in the coronavirus catastrophe offer any window into this communist regime’s machinations, deceitfulness, and debasement of human life, it is that the threat they represent is unlike anything America has faced.

(3 of 15) Our popular culture, free press, and multinational businesses have to this point been liberalizing and democratizing forces, reflecting America’s supremacy in all major forms of soft power.

(4 of 15) Yet the stability and the endurance of this bulwark must be reconsidered, as the PRC now holds sway over Hollywood and infuses its control and propaganda into our press, businesses, and universities.

(5 of 15) The PRC works to transmute America’s soft power, which is made possible by appropriating America’s freedoms, laws, and politicians, who are informed by the academy.

(6 of 15) Strategic purchases of U.S. businesses and the placement of Chinese companies on American stock exchanges and indexes have also given the PRC enormous suasion over the avenues of American soft power.

(7 of 15) China has lent African nations $124 billion from 2000 through 2016. The largest portion of each loan is not generally provided to the borrower, but spent in China to finance Chinese-made inputs and trained labor.

(8 of 15) The recipient country, in effect, finances jobs and manufacturing in China. The reward for targeted countries is to have their assets appropriated, due to loan non-performance.

(9 of 15) If the West slides into steep recession, developing nations may sell whatever they can in national riches to China for cents on the dollar. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative will thus be realized. This avarice is the PRC’s Achilles’ heel.

(10 of 15) America must exploit this weakness by offering African and developing nations an alternative to the BRI.

(11 of 15) To establish deterrence so a future malevolent actor sees our capacities both to endure and to respond, America must exact a high price from the People’s Republic of China. In this cause, we must seek the support of all the free nations of the world.

(12 of 15) If America had done a tenth of what China has done to the world, even given the most charitable view of their acts, the PRC would do anything to make us pay.

(13 of 15) If we are not willing to act, and decisively, we are leaving the field to an unhindered, unremorseful, and ravenous state with a degree of relative economic power that we have not faced since the War of 1812.

(14 of 15) This pandemic has almost certainly uncovered treachery by the PRC. It did not have to be planned. It is enough that the communists seized on it, took advantage of it, and had special knowledge of its origin.

(15 of 15) To prosper, we must reclaim America’s principles, lest we grant China victory in a great, undeclared war.

Read the rest of this great article here: https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/19/what-u-s-national-strategy-should-look-like-in-the-wake-of-coronavirus/