THAT SHOULD BE EASY TO MAKE: It Is Time For a Libertarian Case Against China. “I’ll simply note that it is silly for Drezner to claim that the flaws in the old model were not apparent until we got to the point where a million Uyghurs had been thrown in concentration camps and the NBA was held hostage for not parroting Communist line. The truth is that the interests, ideology, and goals of the Communist Party of China of 2019 were not so different from those of the Party of 2009, and it was around 2009, not 2017 or 2018, that the Party began a clear, decisive shift against the growing liberalism in their own country and the ‘threats’ posed by liberal ideas and orders abroad. What was happening was undeniable by the time of the Scarborough Shoal standoff in 2012; that America’s political class only started taking the problem seriously in the last three years is evidence of just how difficult it can be to dislodge settled minds from their errors.”

Well, and of how many in the political class are, one way or another, on the take.