In his famous 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech warning of a rising Soviet imperium, Winston Churchill hailed a “special relationship” between the United States and the British Empire. As Churchill put it: “If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealths be added to that of the United States with all that such cooperation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of security.”

The world faces a similar communist threat today. Indeed, because of Beijing’s ability to draw traditional American allies into subordinating economic entanglements, its threat is arguably even greater than that which the Soviet Union posed. China has the potential to overcome the common freedom and prosperity that defines the U.S.-led democratic international order. Under Xi Jinping’s now-supreme authority, Communist China aims to enthrone itself atop a new feudal mercantilist international order in which Beijing extracts political fealty in return for scraps of economic opportunity.