Watching President Joe Biden’s stunningly clumsy performance in Tokyo last week, during which he committed the U.S. to defending Taiwan militarily, my mind went to the old adage, “All politics is local.” I am sure it is, but we are called upon to extend the thought: “All foreign policy is local” is our late-imperial reality.

The rest of the world is mere proscenium for our purported leaders, to put this point another way. No one with a hand in American foreign policy, so far as I can make out, is the slightest bit interested in the one thing, above all others, that the 21st century requires of competent statecraft. This is the desire and ability to understand the perspectives of others.

Have you ever heard anyone in the Washington policy cliques state, or even wonder, what China’s legitimate interests are in East Asia, first of all on the question of sovereignty over Taiwan? I haven’t either.

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