This is John Batchel, colleague Mary Kissel, former senior advisor to the Secretary of State,

has some questions about the new national security strategy, such as China is a major adversary,

and it gathers to it what Mary characterizes as a condominium of adversaries of the United States, North Korea, Iran, and especially

Russia. So therefore, the clarity is missing about China doing this, about China being a threat,

about China being a major threat in East Asia.

Many more questions to be answered going forward.

Here's Mary.

Well, Communist China has a very clear pattern.

If you appease them, they see you as weak and they do more bad things that we don't like.

And if there's one thing about this national security strategy

that did puzzle me is it seemed to imply that,

you know, we need to build up our economy

so we can build up our national defenses.

And that's true.

But as you point out, the threats that we face

aren't just bilateral.

We're facing a condominium of nations,

namely China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, who want to do us harm. And they're not really confined

to their own geographies. For instance, we've talked many times on this program about the threat

that China poses inside the United States,

burrowing into our critical infrastructure networks,

shutting down free speech on campuses,

...