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Jordan: It's a nice piece but wanting in one crucial respect. It treats China-Taiwan as an isolated case.

But what happens if Russia-Ukraine escalates or war breaks out in the Middle East (Israel/USA tries to bomb out of existence the Iranian nuke program? If there are multiple crises, that might well represent the best case scenario for Xi. Can the States alone handle a worldwide conflagration? Might Europe say "let's focus on matters closer to home"?

This is not farfetched. Indeed ask people in China, Japan UK, US, Germany and Russia when exactly WWII broke out? Each country has a different answer.

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