Secretary of State Mike Pompeo conducted the tail-end of the Four Musketeers, who each presented their China containment speeches over the last few weeks (the others were Peter Navarro, William Barr, and Mark Esper). Pompeo indicated (and it should come as no surprise) that he was the choreographer of this particular vaudeville show, and no doubt this was due to his unique capabilities at West Point where he was the first in his class in “engineering management.” The speech itself was the ultimate “chamber of horrors” description of a world which accepts the P.R.C. Pompeo chose Nixon’s Library at Yorba Linda perhaps to indicate that his new China policy was the end of the engagement policy with the People’s Republic of China that began with Nixon’s visit in 1972.
And on this he was most explicit. “The old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t [work].... We must not continue it and we must not return to it.” He later stated: “The truth is that our policies – and those of other free nations – resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were feeding it.” And then quotes from Barr’s speech, “`The ultimate ambition of China’s rulers isn’t to trade with the United States. It is to raid the United States.’” He then went on and on in the same vein. We were “hoodwinked by Beijing’s talk of a `peaceful rise.’” And saying the CCP runs a Marxist-Leninist regime and “General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.” “When it comes to the CCP, I say we must distrust and verify.” “People’s Liberation Army is not a normal army.… Its purpose is to uphold … the Chinese Communist Party elites and expand a Chinese empire, not to protect the Chinese people.” “...Communists almost always lie.”
