Second, don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good enough. A danger-zone strategy is a race against the clock, and the China threat is escalating faster than business-as-usual in Washington can keep up. Securing U.S. interests will require embracing second-best solutions, adapting old capabilities for new purposes, and assembling imperfect coalitions on the fly. Think of this as “strategic MacGyverism”—using the tools we have or can quickly summon to defuse geopolitical bombs that are about to explode.
