The center of gravity of a world aflame: The Chinese regime is the ‘focus of evil in the modern world’

A world aflame compels a reflection on strategic priorities. The wars in Europe and the Middle East are brutal struggles and humanitarian disasters that are certain to become even worse.

Each war is pregnant with the possibility of escalation to higher levels of conflict and involving more states. At this time when U.S. resources are stressed, and there is a possibility of greater conflict, it is important to keep the U.S. focus on the enemy’s center of gravity.

The head of the snake is the Chinese regime. If that could be eliminated, Iran and its allies would be far lesser threats, and Russia under Vladimir Putin would be as well. To borrow from President Ronald Reagan’s March 8, 1983 “Evil Empire” address to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, where he termed the Soviet Union the “focus of evil in the modern world,” so, too, today is the Chinese regime the focus of evil in the modern world. The center of gravity of these wars is found in the ideology and ambition of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

A path to its defeat is through offensive political warfare—undermining its chokehold on the Chinese people so that they can overthrow this odious regime and so it can no longer generate and support conflict the world over.

Xi Jinping has a sense of inferiority as he constantly informs the Chinese people that they are great under the CCP and yet have always been taken advantage of by Europeans, Manchus, Mongols, Japanese, and Americans.

That reveals a great insecurity in Mr. Xi’s and the CCP’s conception of China. Certainly powerful, but not powerful enough, and indeed, not good enough to supplant the West. The Party’s genesis was Lenin; it was nurtured by Stalin and the Comintern, and later supported by the West—first as a balancer to Soviet power and then as a source of manufacturing and investment.

Nor does one suspect if Mr. Xi and the CCP truly want China to supplant the West. Were they to do so, it would cause the loss of the prime mover of Hegelian History, the source of technological innovation, scientific advancement, and social dynamism. It would result in the loss of the standards by which to exercise political power, to judge successes, and to provide legitimacy and a teleology for the CCP. It wants the power and legitimacy of the West. But to gain the West’s power and legitimacy, it would have to forfeit communism.

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