My Take | Why the Asia Society invited the wrong person to speak on China
- Heckler who provided intelligence and common sense against speaker Matt Pottinger, a China hawk, tackled and put in chokehold by security
Well, so much for promoting Chinese and American mutual understanding. That at least is what the Asia Society, the prestigious cultural exchange group with a branch in Hong Kong, claims to be its mission.
It didn’t look that way in New York on Monday when it invited Matt Pottinger, Donald Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, to talk about China. But if the society wanted to promote a war across the Taiwan Strait and potentially trigger a third world war, it couldn’t have picked a more qualified person.
A former hack with The Wall Street Journal, Pottinger got his last White House job on the sheer strength of his warmongering anti-China credentials. No doubt he is hoping for a second stint under President Trump 2.0 come November, as he has been busy sharing his pearls of wisdom publicly.
Who knows? Maybe he will get the full job title this time once held by such strategic luminaries as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. It makes perfect sense; it would show how far American diplomacy and the presidency itself have fallen.
He was essentially repeating the same message he wrote about with a fellow hawk, former congressman Mike Gallagher in Foreign Affairs: “No Substitute for Victory: America’s Competition with China Must be Won”.
What does that mean? Decouple completely with China, help Taiwan gain independence and ready US allies in Asia for war.
Personally, I have heard more nuanced political analyses from taxi drivers in New York and Hong Kong.