You need to juggle drones and walls where you must; invest in chickens, gardens, and schools where you can; amplify islands of decency wherever you find them; deter competing superpowers—whenever you’re not also enlisting their help; learn to live with the fact that a foreign policy of amplify, deter, and degrade will more often than not require us to side with the least bad over the worst; and finally, appreciate that widening decency is the necessary precursor to electoral democracy—and in many places is more important.
