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American fear and pettiness has been driving a very bad China policy. We do not learn geopolitics in k-12 and it shows in our inability to imagine a strategic world. The Ukraine war is in a context of China, iI, Russian, European Middle Eastern, African dynamics. Part of that context is also nuclear capacity, population pressures, health issues and above all climate heating. All issues that cross multiple national borders. The Ukraine war could have been won by Ukraine with US and European support if, and only if, we kept china and Russia apart. The US should have reached out to all these nations with an invitation to work these issues we all share. Each of these is dynamic and ambitious. By not working cooperatively with China (which I judge Xi wanted) we have forced China and Russia toward more cooperation and thus yo a realigned, reconfigured power world we of necessity must face. This will force other countries to chose. In a world of the US and Europe vs. the rest, the US looses.
The tendency of a declining leadership state is to lash out. Our own military industrial complex supports this and our military - which is actually somewhat separate from the industrial, would probably prefer the strategic approach of let’s work together. But politics looking for a fight plus media looking for clicks plus financial interests looking for business and profit are against it.