The 2022 Winter Olympics will be remembered for geopolitics, not sports. It’s where Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin declared war on the post-Cold War world order and the American primacy that sustained it. Issuing a joint statement that criticized the U.S. by name six times and outlined an ambitious program of anti-Western collaboration from Ukraine to the South China Sea, the two leaders left no doubt that the world’s holiday from history has come to an end.
The world has changed, and American policy must change with it. The longer the U.S. waits to build a national defense adequate to the challenges it faces, the greater the danger and expense ultimately will be.
Americans shouldn’t deceive themselves. The end of the post-Cold War era is a major setback. For 30 years the American intellectual and policy establishment mocked Russia, fantasized about China, and frittered the country’s resources away on ill-judged diversions. At the same time, opponents—clearer-eyed than the U.S. was about the foundations of international power—created new realities that Washington must confront.
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