The chances that Trump will casually threaten China and get pulled into a dynamic he cannot control should be taken very seriously. Bismarck once said, ‘Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.’ It is conceivable Trump is possessed by some kind of morbid spirit. More worrying, however, is his proudly held ignorance of how other countries think – and thus how rivals such as China will interpret his actions. As Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz and others observed in earlier times, the key to good diplomacy is to put yourself in your opponent’s shoes. Reducing the scope for
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