After North Korea’s H-Bomb test in September 2017, some analysts, myself included, urged the White House to consider possible military options, using conventional surgical strikes to denuclearize North Korea quickly, while minimizing escalatory risks. Decades of failed talks, and the failed Hanoi nuclear summit proves again, North Korea will not denuclearize peacefully. Dictator Kim Jong-un’s game is to buy time through pretend negotiations to build enough ICBMs so nuclear-armed North Korea, with a Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) relationship with the United States, becomes irreversible. Economic sanctions designed to pressure North Korea’s denuclearization peacefully never worked, and are not working now. According to a recent United Nations report obtained by the Associated Press, leaked in the UK Guardian (March 11, 2019): “United Nations experts are investigating possible violations of UN sanctions on North Korea in about 20 countries, from alleged clandestine nuclear procurement in China to arms brokering in Syria and military cooperation with Iran, Libya and Sudan.” “The expert panel’s 66-page report to the security council also detailed the appearance in North Korea of a Rolls-Royce Phantom, Mercedes-Benz limousines and Lexus LX 570 all-wheel-drives in violation of a ban on luxury goods.” Moreover, according to the UN report: “North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs remained intact and its leaders were dispersing missile assembly and testing facilities to prevent ‘decapitation’ strikes.” North Korea is now reneging on dismantlement of their Sohae satellite launch facility, rebuilding Sohae to orbit satellites, possibly nuclear-armed for EMP attack.

They pervert food and medicine in any way they can to make money - this is a technique used by street vendors in China and applied at the highest level to deceptively adulterate the product. The entire “political system” in China is corrupt, from the very lowest level to the very highest. There has never been any accountability for public corruption except as punishment - Mafia style - for not paying off the vertical chain of corrupt officials. Bribery is a way of life in China, always has been and always will be ? and the fact China occasionally executes a token corrupt public official is meant for show and a lesson to pay bribes up the chain of political command. How do we deal with it? The guiding principle for anything that comes out of China is to not believe it. Nevertheless, dealing with China is impossible if we simply decide not to deal with the lie. We must learn to better deal with it. Here are some basic rules for dealing with China. In any negotiation, China must know/understand/realize that we don’t believe them - and unlike in other parts of the world, this will not offend because it’s not offensive in China. In fact, it’s routine and expected as a part of everyday life. We can never believe anything from China that we cannot actually see and verify the reality thereof. For example, how many nuclear weapons does it have? We will never know this and the actual number will always be many times our best estimates: China will always hide its nukes. We should assume that all foods, medicines, chemicals, metals, etc., from China will be adulterated and require continuous inspection. Will China continue to cheat even if we catch them at it? For sure.

All war is based on deception.” And China has effectively been at war with us since the end of World War II. China has also been at war with everyone else in the world to the extent it competes for business or the political control China wants. Just look at Chinese expansion in South America and Africa ? their goal is to own and control these regions to the exclusion of all other influences. Origins of the China approach go back to its philosophically based history ? the Confucian approach to life was/is based on the end result rather than the way it was obtained, and the general rejection of legal structures. Many say that President Xi Jinping is an energetic advocate of Confucian approaches to his governance and obsession with control. The latest example is Hong Kong ? soon to be under total PRC control. Taiwan is next. How does the lie “get to us?” China has weaponized its people in more ways than we seem to realize, especially by stealing information and bribing insiders. China has hundreds of thousand students overseas who are obliged to report. China carelessly ? maybe even intentionally ? sent infected COVID-19 travelers to the rest of the world. And what China fears most now are internationally-coordinated efforts for trillions in enforced compensation. Accordingly, we should be aggressively coordinating these efforts worldwide. They have weaponized their high-tech exports by building back doors into their systems to collect information ? the concern about 5G and Huawei is only the most recent. They steal everyone’s technology and observe no copyright or patent legal regimes anywhere in the world.

One of the many ironies of the COVID-19 global pandemic is the world’s rediscovery that most everything that comes out of China is ― somehow or someway - based on lies, a sad reality based on the long cultural tradition of Chinese deception. Without exception, this fundamental risk is the most critical element in every aspect of any dealing with China, whether it’s a complex national security matter or a simple commercial transaction. China lies about, cheats and steals absolutely everything ― there are no exceptions. This is China at its most basic and historical level. Back in the days of books and vinyl records, Chinese pirated copies were for sale the day after they were released. Today, it’s all forms of technology and at the highest levels. Perhaps the most ironic part of this historical reality is that it’s completely known and understood throughout Asia. And China fully understands it about itself ― China deals with it every day and at every level of its society and expects it from all parts of its society. It’s also the realty that transcends all Chinese politics. For a comparable example, one must look at organized crime, the Mafia and drug cartels. And perhaps doubly ironic, the pervasive corruption of communism remains the “perfect fit” for modern China. It’s the only political model that could “work” in China. Accordingly, three basic aspects of China’s corrupt behavior need better understanding in the West: Where does “the lie” come from in China, how does it “get to us” and how do we best deal with it? Where does the lie come from? Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and author of “The Art of War” probably said it best.

Those adjustments are more compelling, because China’s newly urbanized populations continue cultural practices such as live wild animal markets that can be expected to generate more transnational pathogens. And Western commercial and scientific relationships cannot be adequately terminated without large economic dislocations voters would be unwilling to accept. Chinese authorities moved aggressively in Wuhan and surrounding communities to keep individuals in their homes by dispatching armies of low-level enforcers and using mobile phone data to rundown those who slipped lockdowns. Even suspected cases and many healthy individuals with close contact to confirmed cases were sent to special quarantine facilities. And Beijing has essentially closed the country to foreign visitors. The idea that President Trump would quarantine the New York metro area was greeted with strong protests from state officials. Now we face months of the virus spreading out and reaching virtually every corner of the country. Before we are done, China may well be able to boast to the world its authoritarian government accomplished both fewer lost lives and less economic losses than the United States, Italy and several other European nations. It seems that China overcame a crisis - lessened the tradeoff between public health and sustaining prosperity. Now, America must respond by building stronger pandemic containment mechanisms - those that are publicly accountable and not subject to abuse - or our democracy will simply not measure up to the challenges of globalization.

China, after initially denying the coronavirus, took stronger measures than Italy, Washington State and New York and other states. And U.S. citizens have been slow to respond to voluntary measures ? despite their clear potential benefits. Consequently, our national experience will be more like Italy than China, and 240,000 deaths out of a population of 331 million could result. Still the porous business closures, work-at-home and social distancing we have implemented easily could push unemployment to 20 percent and reduce GDP by as much as $5 trillion. America has both suffered the loss of life of a significant unbridled pandemic and taken an economic hit that rivals China ? where loss of life will be less. It’s folly to believe that the U.S. economy will bounce back quickly or be the same as before ? wars and crises enable new technologies and business practices and permanently alter consumer behavior. Americans are mastering strategies that better permit virtual workplaces and fewer business trips and accelerate the shift to online commerce. Some industries will come back smaller ? airlines and hotels ? and many restaurants and retailers will close permanently. Unemployment will not quickly fall again to 3.5 percent, and general economic activity, corporate profits and stock prices will not quickly recover to the levels just prior to the pandemic. In addition to retooling displaced workers, businesses will harden supply chains ? diversify international sources for components. Western governments will seek greater national self-sufficiency in critical health care products. All that will come at some cost in lost efficiency and growth.

The coronavirus lays bare the terrible dangers of globalization on steroids but will hardly summon its demise. The benefits from international exchange of goods, capital, technology and people are too compelling, and the real challenges are to manage those more effectively and forging tougher domestic measures to cope with pandemics. After World War II, freer commerce among Western democracies and supporting institutions ushered a golden age of capitalism ? mutually re-enforcing peace and prosperity among historical adversaries and opportunities for developing nations to transform their economies and raise millions from poverty. The coronavirus reveals a global supply chain drawn too taut by just-in-time inventory practices and lowest price sourcing. Apple can’t make nearly enough iPhones if China shuts down, automakers in Germany must idle workers if components’ factories in northern Italy close and we are perilously dependent on China for many active ingredients to make many drugs. The threats posed by coronavirus are hardly something new - influenza pandemics swept the United States in 1957, 1968 and 2009. In 1957, the United States did not practice much social distancing, most schools remained open and little was done to limit workplace interactions. The virus killed 100,000 Americans out of a population of 177 million but had a very small impact on the economy. The example of St. Louis, which responded to the 1918 Spanish Flu more quickly and suffered fewer casualties than Philadelphia, was either not yet well enough documented by historians or federal health authorities placed too much trust in only partially effective vaccines.

The more China tries to minimize the success of Taiwan the more important Taiwan becomes in the international order. It is, says one diplomat, “one of the greater ironies of our time.” The Communists in Beijing regard Taiwan as a rogue province, irritated that it stands just off-shore as an eloquent rebuttal to the argument that only an autocratic Chinese nation can be economically prosperous. Taiwan not only represents what freewheeling economies can do, but the proof it can be done in a Chinese society with a democratic government. Capitalism survives in China, with the understanding that it just can’t be called capitalism. Words matter, and capitalism is the c-word. Taiwan’s 25 million men, women and children make it only the 55th largest nation in the world, a tiny fragment of the Chinese mainland population of 1.4 billion. Taiwan’s dynamic capitalism is driven by privately owned industrial and manufacturing companies, many with origins in the long Japanese occupation, which ended with the end of World War II. Electronics, machinery and petrochemicals have driven the miracle economy. Despite the political differences, in 2006 mainland China overtook the United States to become Taiwan’s second-largest customer. Since 2009, Taiwan has gradually loosened rules governing mainland investment in Taiwan, getting in return greater access to the mainland market. Commerce with the mainland takes a higher priority but Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration has made more progress boosting trade with south Asia, which may insulate Taiwan’s economy from a fall in mainland demand if China’s growth slows further in the future.

In 1994, when he was China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, whom many Westerners believed to be a reformer, said: “We must bide our time and hide our capabilities.” What could he have meant? Possibly this as stated by Gen. Chi Hoation, China’s minister of defense in 1999: “War with the United States is inevitable … we must make sure that we would win this modern high-tech war.” In 2016, Business Insider quoted from an annual report by the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission: “China has entertained the threat of nuclear strikes against west coast cities such as Los Angeles and Seattle. “According to the report,” it said, “a Chinese newspaper sponsored by the Communist Party ran an article in November 2013 about the possibilities of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) strikes against much of the U.S.’s Pacific Coast.” As if to confirm suspicions, China’s new strategic stealth bomber, known as Xian H-20, is expected to become operational later this year(2020). Beijing reportedly is considering the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the possible political fallout if China is found responsible for the spread of the virus before unveiling the aircraft. The bomber will double China’s strike capacity. The United States has a number of economic options to punish China should Secretary of State Mike Pompeo be proven correct in his assertion that there is “no doubt” the virus originated in Wuhan. With China’s strong economy backing up its increasingly powerful military, there doesn’t appear much else the United States can do to deter China from fulfilling its aspirations other than to consider a military confrontation.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union two years later lulled the West into a false sense of security. Many appeared to believe that an age of unending peace and prosperity had been ushered in. While terrorism would become a stateless threat, most people probably thought it to be an aberration and at least manageable. If people paid much attention to the Chinese brand of communism, most saw it as less of a threat than the Soviet Union with which we had seven decades of tensions culminating in a near-nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. China seemed content to stay within its borders. Unlike Moscow, Beijing did not appear to have expansionist goals. Since President Nixon began the slow process of establishing diplomatic relations with the Communist regime with his visit in 1972, China was still regarded as something less than a major threat to the West and especially the United States. In his prescient 2005 book, “China: The Gathering Threat,” former Ronald Reagan adviser Constantine Menges, Ph.D. wrote: “China expects, when it moves to take control of Taiwan, the U.S. will not take any military action, even though President George W. Bush said, ‘We will do whatever it takes to prevent such an event.’” To reduce the chances it would be underestimated, China gave the U.S. its war plan against Taiwan, which included nuclear strikes against American targets.” Mr. Menges added, “Yet, the main gathering threat derives from China’s stealthy strategy of geopolitical and economic dominance. This is a strategy rooted in four thousand years of imperial history and the more recent brutal lessons of Marxist-Leninist power politics.”