“Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.”  

- George Washington, Farewell Address

“Every reform by violence is to be deprecated, because it does little to correct the evil while men remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.”

- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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For its part, Congress should pass legislation that withholds certain types of federal funding for U.S. universities that maintain contractual or formal relationships with these problematic Chinese universities. Similar legislation that barred U.S. universities that host CIs from receiving Defense Department language funding resulted in more than a dozen CI closures. Complementary funding guardrails should also be incorporated into the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which significantly increases R&D investments at U.S. universities. Doing so could prevent Beijing from actively or passively reaping the benefits of these new investments.

The one area where pivot critics are correct is the time and attention of decision-makers. Elites have only so much time and mental energy. Time spent on Russia is not spent on China. The pivot is hard, as it requires US policy-makers to learn more about Asian history and cultures. The sheer familiarity of the Atlantic architecture is likely one reason for the Biden administration’s comfort with the Ukraine issue. But the long-term challenge is still China, and the sooner the Europeans can take over the European portfolio, the better. It is overdue for US decision-makers to follow the pivot.

The movement of the young enlisted troops living in Comfort and Sanctuary halls began Saturday and followed a Navy Times investigation Friday that revealed how some junior sailors and soldiers had been living without hot water and other basic amenities in those buildings for years.

• Chinese international student groups sometimes use the language of social justice to silence criticism of the Chinese government's human rights record.
• The incident also highlights the fears among Uyghur, Tibetan, Hong Kong, and pro-democracy Chinese students in the U.S. that they can't exercise their right to free speech.
• "Some Chinese students in the U.S. often don't realize that it's possible to be both victim and oppressor at the same time," Maya Wang, senior China analyst at Human Rights Watch, told Axios.

• The posters show athletes wearing uniforms bearing the Chinese flag pointing a rifle at a bound and gagged Uyghur; pinning down a Tibetan; skating over a Hong Kong flag; riding atop a surveillance camera doubling as a snowboard; and pushing a virus across the ice.
• The identity of the person who put the posters around GWU's campus isn't known.
• Chinese Australian artist and political cartoonist Badiucao created the posters before the Olympics began and made them available for free download online.
• "My art is always targeting the Chinese Communist Party, never the Chinese suffering from this regime," Badiucao, who lives in Australia, told Axios.

• The posters "pose a potential risk to the personal safety of all Chinese and Asian students at George Washington University, including verbal and physical violence," the group said.
• "The ideas expressed are not based on indisputable facts but rather on highly controversial political disputes," the statement read. "This series of posters incites not only intra-ethnic hatred in China but also inter-ethnic hostility and inter-cultural contempt."
• The Chinese Cultural Association did not respond to a request for comment.

• "Upon full understanding, I do not view these posters as racist; they are political statements. There is no university investigation underway, and the university will not take any action against the students who displayed the posters," Wrighton said.

• Official Chinese students associations abroad often have close ties to China's embassies and consulates, which often provide funding to the groups and sometimes ask them to hold pro-Chinese Communist Party political activities.
• The Chinese government also uses the language of anti-racism and inclusion to discredit discussion of its repressive policies. Uyghurs who criticize the Chinese government's repressive policies, such as putting people who pray frequently into mass internment camps, have been imprisoned on charges of "inciting ethnic hatred."

• "Racism and discrimination against people of Chinese origin is definitely real," said Wang.
• "But some are exploiting this legitimate grievance and twisting it to say that any criticism of China is racism against Chinese people and should not be raised in any form. It is quite disingenuous of them to raise the oppression of African Americans, while completing dismissing the oppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kongers."

• "I know of many Chinese students in the U.S. who are afraid of these Chinese student associations," Wang said.
• "They don’t think these groups represent their views, they don’t want to participate in their activities because they feel they are being bullied," she added, but students with different views don't feel it is safe to form their own independent associations for fear of reprisal back in China.

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• Al-Qurayshi detonated a bomb that killed himself and several other people, including his wife and children, in a U.S. raid.
• But the terror network he oversaw has a continuity of operations plan, experts say.
• The group, experts and U.S. intelligence officials said, still poses a threat to U.S. interests.

And so, in the Orwellian finale, "democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of States." Democracy is not a matter of whether you are a citizen of those "limited number of States" where your vote actually matters. If democratic countries speaks about democracy, these are simply "attempts at hegemony." If people protest because they would like to vote, or would like for their votes to be counted, these are simply "colour revolutions," which Russia and China agree to oppose.

The surreal claim that everything is democratic is heartening in a certain way. It shows how robust the value of democracy is, even in troubled times. In the twentieth century, communist regimes likewise could not concede the language of democracy. Thus East Germany was officially the "German Democratic Republic," and the other communist regimes referred to themselves as "people's democracies." North Korea to this day is officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It was to be understood that “people’s republics” were superior to "bourgeois democracies," where people voted and the votes counted. In the end, it usually turns out that people like to vote. And, one suspects, people in Russia and China today would also like to have their votes counted. If their leaders are promising democracy, then that is a natural demand.

In their post-modern way, Russian and Chinese leaders are pulling on the same thread as fallen communist regimes. Even as they offer nothing more to the world than the absence of democracy, they cannot concede the language of democracy. Their tactic is to make this language meaningless. Which means that the best way to oppose them is to make it meaningful.

• Strategic Action: Sail a carrier strike group through the Taiwan Strait following significant Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.
• Assumed Reaction: Beijing will recognize the strength of the US will to defend Taiwan.
• Theory of Success: China’s recognition of US resolve, demonstrated by sailing a carrier strike group through the Taiwan Strait, will make existing and future US deterrent threats more credible, thus improving the likelihood the United States’ preferred strategy of deterrence will work to prevent Chinese aggression against Taiwan and maintain the status quo.

As in most policy analysis, there is no perfect answer and, in this case, there may not even be a good answer. Yet, a policy of post-strike silence and ambiguity could go far in protecting not only our troops and their tactics, but it could also help to mitigate retribution, terrorist recruitment and incitement within vulnerable allied nations. Such a policy would endure criticism from the media, transparency advocates and perhaps even constitutional jurists, but it is a policy worth consideration.