Peace Through Strength Requires Economic Freedom – The Wall Street Journal

As the U.S. pounds plowshares into swords for a second Cold War, lessons from the first one may serve those who care to consider them. The American policy of peace through strength, market-driven economic growth, and open trade defeated the Soviet Union. The emerging conflict with China, excepting the military threat to Taiwan, will for the foreseeable future be almost entirely economic. That will make it unlike the military conflicts with the Soviet Union and its proxies in Eastern Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and countless global insurrections. If the U.S. maintains peace through strength, it can lose this struggle only by forfeiting the source of its economic success: economic freedom.

China is currently expanding government dominance of its economy and suffering a concomitant reduction in economic growth, tech-stock valuations and employment. If President Biden and Congress have their way, Chinese-style industrial and antitrust policies will soon come to the U.S. The America Competes Act is the Houses effort to outdo the Chinese Communist Partys latest five-year plan. The 2,900-page bill would make an old Soviet commissar blush. The Senate version of the bill is better, but why would Republicans try to compete with China in a way they know doesnt work when they are heavily favored to win back control of Congress in November?

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Peace Through Strength Requires Economic Freedom - The Wall Street Journal