Free Republic

It turns out we are so wedded to the Chinese, that our own defense sector, while they may be able to “de-risk” – the “it” word of the moment – absolutely find it well-nigh impossible to “de-couple,” in the Gwyneth Paltrow sense.So we are being told as of yesterday. It figures – the Raytheon CEO with the word would be in Paris not Poughkeepsie – but he felt duty bound to disabuse us of those quaint notions we had about bringing American interests, especially security-wise, home.Handsomely, he left the door open for other defense contractors to walk through who agree...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the Biden administration’s position that it would not be in “our interest” to decouple from China during a Monday press conference in Beijing held after talks with genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. Blinken’s two-day trip to China marks the first time a U.S. secretary of state has met with Xi since 2018. After his meeting with Xi, Blinken reiterated that the administration is “not about decoupling” from China; instead, they are about “de-risking and diversifying.”

When I lived in Russia in 1994, the only two places that sold affordable food to go in the entire metropolis were McDonalds and a sandwich chain called ‘Combis’. I learned to say “a BigMac and fries, please” in Russian just as fast as I learned to understand “Attention, the doors are closing” on the long metro journey from the burbs where I lived so get some hot food. McDonalds had opened in Moscow on 31 January 1990, before the USSR was dissolved, and the enormous crowds it drew were taken as emblematic of the power of Western capitalism and...