政治

History's Warning to President Trump: Appease the Authoritarian Today, Pay in Blood Tomorrow : China

With great respect to President Trump, whose relentless focus on national sovereignty and America First economic, trade, and foreign policy is vital, we must say plainly: the argument to separate economic engagement from authoritarian aggression is both historically reckless and strategically naïve.

The world has seen this movie before, multiple times, and it does not end well.

In the 1930s, well-meaning diplomats insisted that economic cooperation with Nazi Germany would temper its militarism. Chamberlain waved his worthless paper after meeting Hitler in Munich and proclaimed “peace for our time.” Meanwhile, Hitler was absorbing Austria, carving up Czechoslovakia, aggressively building his war machine, and laying plans for a continental bloodbath. Appeasement didn’t prevent war, it emboldened it.

So too did détente with Stalin buy little more than time for the Soviet Union to consolidate its satellite empire. And how many American administrations believed they could tether China to the rules-based international order by “engagement,” “constructive dialogue,” or WTO accession”? The fruits of that fantasy are clear: genocide in Xinjiang, techno-authoritarianism exported globally, and a PLA arming itself for war in the Taiwan Strait.

Xi Jinping is not a misunderstood statesman seeking coexistence. He is a Leninist autocrat methodically executing a plan to displace American leadership and impose Chinese primacy—politically, economically, militarily, and technologically.

To suggest that we can “agree to disagree” on Taiwan while making trade deals with the same regime that runs 2.4 million daily cyberattacks on Taipei, surrounds the island with mock blockades, and issues war threats as casually as press releases—is a grave misreading of the stakes. The U.S. itself endures ongoing, large-scale Chinese intrusions into our telecom networks, power grids, and critical infrastructure—salted deep into our system by state-backed actors like Volt Typhoon. We tried separating business from ideology with the CCP for 40 years. They didn’t separate anything. They used the cash, tech, and IP to build the very arsenal now aimed at our allies and interests.

When you do business with the devil, don’t be surprised when he uses the profits to buy a bigger pitchfork...and then turns it on you.

Cyberwarfare, the South China Sea, and Taiwan are not side-issues—they are centerpieces of China’s global strategy. By treating them as mere “disputes to be managed,” we risk repeating the catastrophic error of those who thought the Japanese oil embargo of 1941 was the spark—not the inevitable result of decades of imperial aggression.

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