Pompeo’s Surreal Speech on China

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave one of the most surreal speeches of the Donald Trump presidency at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, on Thursday. In his speech, titled “ Communist China and the Free World’s Future ,” he declared the failure of 50 years of engagement with China and called for free societies to stand up to Beijing. I am sympathetic to the argument. I wrote a book in 2017 about how Western hopes that China would converge with the liberal international order have failed. I have argued for almost two years that when Trump leaves office, the United States should put the free world at the center of its foreign policy. Unfortunately,...