It is also important that restraint be emphasized in the future because of the looming fight over how to address China. There are differences of opinion even in these pages about how serious that threat is, but for my part it strikes me as more serious than the ones our forever wars in the Middle East have intended to address. Regardless, it’s not hard to envision a scenario in which the blob shifts its substantial institutional resources toward China instead. This is already happening; we may deplore the treatment of Uyghurs in China, but it’s the hand of American soft power that’s making sure we find out about it, and it’s important to keep that in mind. To the hammer of the blob, every problem looks like a nail, and we cannot expect the confrontation with China to be handled with any more skill than the Iraq war. My litmus test for a politician or policy mandarin is this: Before talking about any military response, they must have a plan to disentangle the United States from their economy in a way that benefits Americans.

That’s the key: China has to be addressed first and foremost because our economic relationships with that communist power have had a negative impact on working Americans, not because of some grand ideological struggle with communism. We’ve had enough of their crusades, and we don’t intend to allow the same people to wage another one.