Plate on China
As an admirer of Tom Plate’s writings, I was somewhat disappointed by his March 4 column. I have not read “The Coming Conflict With China,” so I cannot comment from firsthand knowledge. But it is written by veteran journalists and China experts, and deserves a more thoroughgoing analysis than Plate gives it.
It is just too facile to imply that the U.S. can’t have a coherent foreign policy without identifying some country as the object of our hatred. To suggest that we need a “substitute punching bag for the former Evil Empire” is to be false to history. Marxist theory identified us as the enemy, and Soviet aggressiveness evoked fear on the part of all democracies that led to the formation of NATO. The U.S. didn’t go searching for a punching bag.
ALLAN S. NANES
Simi Valley
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