China on My Mind
I recently returned from Taiwan and the Philippines as part of a small delegation and trip long planned by the International Crisis Group, a trip which coincidentally overlapped with President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing. From meetings with politicians current and former, with military current and former and with media, the perspectives varied, but one unsurprising conclusion abided—China looms and waits.
China’s mascots—the giant panda and the dragon—symbolize the dual power China projects into the world and particularly onto its neighbors. The panda represents peace, friendship, good fortune and is the face most commonly offered at global events, but the fire-breathing Chinese dragon is also a symbol, one of strength and imperial power.
China made clear at the summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump that Taiwan remained a central issue, with a “red line” or noose around the island nation that could lead to conflict if crossed. Xi apparently indicated that he was not seeking war but declared China would not tolerate Taiwan declaring independence.
A nation of 23 million people, Taiwan’s citizens live in a functioning democratic state around the size of Switzerland, with free enterprise and freedom of expression and with just 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait in the South China Sea between them and the mainland and with several Taiwanese-administered islands only a few miles off China’s coast. United by a shared ethnic, linguistic, and cultural heritage and family and economic connections, the Taiwanese and mainland Chinese are divided by governmental and economic systems—one a democracy with regular elections for leadership, the other an autocracy whose government and leadership are chosen by one party—the Chinese Communist Party whose members include only 7% of the population—one out of 15 citizens. The population of the mainland is roughly 1.4 billion people.
Few of those we spoke with expected an imminent military threat from China but acknowledged that if it came, it could be swift and would require major resistance of the population who are increasingly trained in nonviolent resistance. It is more likely the panda will continue to squeeze in a bear hug, though no one dismissed the possibility of the dragon suddenly roaring to life. While the citizens live their quotidian lives, they are aware of the threat. Their leaders continue to debate and argue the best way to negotiate relations with the mainland. All have a clear memory of what happened to Hong Kong and its loss of freedoms when mainland China took over.
The challenge for the Philippines is less existential but no less present as China challenges the sovereignty of maritime limits which the Philippines have won in international courts and which China still disputes. Both countries dispute the sovereignty of certain of the 7000 islands the Philippines claim and dispute who has sovereignty over large swaths of the South China sea where seven countries, including the Philippines and Taiwan, assert competing territorial claims.
Our trip to the two areas was brief but highlighted the vibrancy of the societies and clarified the tensions. The quiet, and sometimes not so quiet, tensions of neighbors oceans away can, as we know, send tsunami waves across the globe.
Into the Breach…
Or is it “Once more unto the breach…” whatever the breach may be.
“Breach”— a crack, a rift, a rupture.
Why would one rush into the crack, the rift, the rupture?
To repair it before it gets bigger and more threatening?
Or is it to put oneself between it and what is ruptured?
Or the original meaning is perhaps to further the crack, assure the rupture and claim victory?
The famous reference is from Shakespeare’s Henry V when King Henry, in the midst of the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years War in 1415, is portrayed as issuing the call. The English soldiers faced overwhelming odds — England’s 6000-10,000 soldiers were confronting 20,000-30,000 French soldiers, two to five times larger force. But the English longbowmen were fighting mounted knights and crossbowmen. Was it superior equipment, strategy, or God who gave the English the victory? The debate continues six hundred years later and remains on occasion still a rallying sentiment with less lethal consequence between English and French.
Today “Once more unto the breach” echoes according to one’s circumstances. It can play out with a breach repaired, a conflict resolved, or the breach opened further and war continuing.
Response to this call will resonate according to one’s geography and circumstance, experience and ontological point of view.
I hope you’ll share your thoughts in the Comments section at the end of this Substack.
From Henry V, spoken by King Henry:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Barking at Thunder 2
Above the traffic and people on the boulevard below, I look out at the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean in the southernmost state of Florida. Occasionally the skies open with a downpour of rain then a crack of lightning slices the sky followed by a massive clap of thunder. These shows are often at night or in the early morning hours when lightning splices the horizon above the dark water and sound reverberates endlessly with nothing to stop it. The storms don’t last long but are intense.
I leave the sliding glass door to the deck slightly open so my dog can go outside if she needs. When the thunder bellows, she is on point. She races onto the deck between the raindrops and barks full throat at the sky, answering and assailing the thunder as if she is the one responsible for protecting our home. She stays out there til the thunder recedes then comes back soaking and pleased with herself. She has stopped the attack. When the sound starts up again, she turns and runs out into the rain to defend us and whatever else in her universe she feels is threatened by this assault of sound and light.
She is a small caramel-colored Australian labradoodle who normally prances down the boulevard making friends with everyone she meets. But when she is threatened, she is mighty. I have written about her brave, if useless, response to this perceived threat before. She has no understanding of the elements, and I have no way of schooling her. Instead I applaud her courage. Since she does no damage to herself or others, hers is not a cautionary tale of ignorance against forces she doesn’t understand. But I share it nonetheless in the hope those of us with more knowledge may avoid barking at thunder.
Sunrise…Sunset: Not Missing Snow, Wind, and Weather
I’ve come to a stage in life that I don’t feel guilty missing hardships. I can’t determine if that is progress or regression. Sometimes I ask what my 20-year-old-self would say. She was more certain about things, about the need to experience what others in difficult circumstances experienced. She sought out challenges, wrote about them, shared the talents she had to try to find remedies. How would she feel living in a lovely new condo in Florida while those she knew and didn’t know suffered the worst storms in decades? She lived through the 1996 blizzards in Washington, DC though she was in her forties then. In her twenties she went into the inner cities and worked and tutored. She is still in contact with one family she tutored and got to know. They taught her more than she taught them.
As a writer, I’ve always wanted to know experiences I haven’t lived. I wanted to understand people from all backgrounds and races and economic conditions and cultures. I have been privileged to have lived in many places and to have traveled with outstanding organizations who help on the ground in exogenous regions and parts of the world—with CARE, Save the Children, the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch, PEN International, Refugees International. In large part, I’ve worked at the governance level and occasionally on the ground in the communities. I’ve been able to contribute financially and to share by writing the experiences I’ve witnessed. But none of that is the most challenging work.
I have been given far more than I have given because I have been given experience and friendship and an expanding point of view. Part of what I’ve learned is that I can’t solve the multiple problems of the world, but I can be a small part of a greater effort to connect. The real connection begins in the heart by recognizing the universal that connects us all.
Over the decades I let go of some of the guilt and replaced it with gratitude and have learned to enjoy the moments and to share them when I can, though I am still not certain what my 20-year-old self would say.
World in Our Minds…Learning from Dogs
We walk around inside our own heads, admitting into our world what we see and hear and think.
I’m sitting at a corner table in a restaurant where I start my day these days, writing for hours, sipping decaf coffee, shaping a new work. I rely on blocking out the ambient noise around me, the conversations at the other tables, even the music in the background. Except today at an adjoining table, a new, friendly host is table-hopping and has stopped to share his past and present with the diners, doing what I suspect his job description includes: making friends with the customers. But today for me, his conversation is intruding. For some reason I’m not able to block out his life and work history that he’s sharing. I want him to go away so I can return to my world which flows out as words on a page. When I’m writing, I rely on being self-centered in my own world of words until I have to join the world around me. It is a process most writers know well, taking in the world, then blocking it out long enough to reshape and craft it in words.
In the newspaper this morning—a real newspaper I’ve asked for—I read about the existential protests in Iran and also citizen protests in my own country with crackdowns on peaceful dissent, even some of the same rhetoric about “traitors.” While there are not wholesale killings in the U.S., there have been shots fired and people killed. This is not my daily world; there are no protests where I am, but I have covered protests before as a journalist. In Iran these are now hard to follow since the government has closed down the internet and communications. I rely on Iranian friends who have some direct contact with those in the country to know that the nationwide uprising may be more existential than in the past with protests in more than 100 cities among widespread citizenry—shopkeepers, students and farmers.
I can only write about those I know or know about—the writers who try to get the word out but often end in prison themselves (see Writer at Risk column this month and other months.)
We live in our minds first and then in our families, work, communities, sharing what’s in our minds, the world as we see it with others. In functioning societies, that sharing of thoughts and perspectives leads to education, commerce, friendships, productive government, but when the thoughts of others are not respected or valued, when we lose sight of the multiple, varied, millions of points of view that have to be synthesized to make up a functioning society, we become isolated, frightened and angry. Those who understand how to hold the whole together seem as rare as figures in history these days and yet as common as a child, or a dog walking down the street sniffing and welcoming everyone she meets. I have such a dog. I watch with admiration and a little awe at how willing she is to greet everyone, often sniffing them shyly until they look down and give her a smile and then a pet and she sidles closer then looks over her shoulder at me as if to say, “See, we’ve made another friend.” She lets them pet her, accepts their smiles and even gratitude for her welcoming presence.
The world is more complicated than a child’s or a dog’s affection, but I am daily reminded how much they understand and carry in their heads that we might learn from.
Message to Tomorrow…
At the threshold of a new year, stepping out beyond the footprints of the old, I walk on.
The known and unknown ahead.
And the unexpected.
I choose a red, not a white car to drive into the new year on the roads and highways of this new destination in Florida…by the beach, by the ocean with the surging Atlantic and the sun rising on the horizon every morning out my window over the endless water.
Changing Latitudes, Chasing the Sun, Voting with Consequence
Geese are starting to fly South, squawking over the river in formation. At least I think theirs is a southward journey. It might just be a Saturday morning field trip, but I haven’t seen any flying in the opposite direction. It is not yet winter, and as I sit by the river this morning facing east with the rising sun in my face, I am pleasantly warm in only a bulky sweatshirt and pants but am told by the weather forecasters that an arctic wind is on its way. The geese are honking all around the river so I think they already know it is time to hit the road or the air.
I began this column in early November on the Eastern Shore of Maryland but won’t post till December. My intent is to offer more than a weather report and subtly—is it subtle?—to speak on larger issues. By the end of the month I will have moved South to Florida. I will vote there in the next election, and for the first time in 30 years my vote may have consequence for in the District of Columbia where I have been a resident for the past decades, the voter has no national representation—no Senators and only one Representative who doesn’t have voting rights in the Congress. The city is heavily one party so a single vote has slight impact. Not that one vote has profound impact anywhere, except that it does. Over these last decades we have learned that one vote, two votes, each citizen’s voice can make a difference. I will find out.
I will still toggle between north and south, but having landed in the state of sunshine and palm trees, I am looking forward to this change of latitude. I am now watching the sun rise on the terrace of a restaurant that doesn’t open till dinner, looking out over cars on the road and a beach just beyond with freighters on the horizon. The geese haven’t gotten this far south yet. I don’t know if they ever arrive in Florida. I will find out. There are occasional sea gulls. I will miss the geese and ducks but will see them again in the spring and summer when we both return, and meanwhile starting next year, I will vote again, perhaps with more consequence.
Tunnel of Hope…Past and Present
Wars end, eventually.
In the middle of war, the end is hard to imagine, and the aftermath unpredictable—devastation restored, justice reconciled, the younger generation taking over…or not? At the moment focus and hope is on a possible peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestinians. In Syria citizens are also in a suspended state of optimistic but cautious hope and skepticism after 13 years of civil war. Other areas of the globe remain locked in conflict.
Recently I returned for a 30th anniversary of the Siege of Sarajevo. During the nine-year Yugoslav Wars (1991-1999) as the country broke up, Serbian forces surrounded the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, blockading it and cutting off food, water, gas, heat, all power, and weapons. Shelling Sarajevo from the surrounding hills 24 hours a day, dropping over 500,000 bombs, Serbia’s 13,000-man force tried to break the will of the citizens, but the Bosnians refused to give up.
Digging for four months, they built an 800-meter tunnel from the airport where the United Nations had control. Through the Tunnel of Hope Bosnians managed to ferry supplies into the city. I remember a Slovenian writer and colleague of mine in International PEN who ran that gauntlet more than once with funds and supplies donated from writers around the world for our colleagues in Sarajevo.
Lasting from April 1992 to February 1996, the Siege of Sarajevo was three times longer than the Battle of Stalingrad and the longest siege of a capital city in modern history.
Last month I arrived for a 30th anniversary board meeting of the International Crisis Group, which was born out of that conflict when three international professionals envisioned an organization that could put top researchers on the ground to discern truth from propaganda and work with a board of high level ex-presidents, foreign ministers and diplomats from around the world who could advise and pass on suggested actions and also operate as a backchannel. Though I’ve never served in government, I was active with nongovernmental organizations and asked to join the board from the second board meeting of the International Crisis Group. I served for 22 years and got a global education in the process. The October 2025 board meeting in Sarajevo was a reunion for many of us and reminded us that even out of one of the worst conflicts, peace can be born.
The day before our gathering, I arrived in Sarajevo and had a guide take me around. Thirty years ago he had been a student and an athlete, a runner, but like most young men he joined the resistance and special forces. He lost part of his leg in the conflict, but he worked for the resistance the whole four years. He lost half of his friends in the conflict.
“We fought and worked in six-hour shifts, then slept six hours, then spent six hours protecting the churches, synagogues and mosques,” he said. Sarajevo took pride in being an ecumenical city where all religions were welcome, he explained.
He told me that when the siege started, he lived at home where his mother loved books and reading and had a library of over 1000 volumes. When the siege was over, she had only two books left because the family had to burn the books for fuel. They also burned their floorboards.
Sarajevo has been largely restored now with modern buildings, hotels, and shopping malls, but some of the bombed-out buildings and those shot with mortars are left standing along the roadside and highways as reminders. The memories abide. How the population functions with those memories a generation later is an ongoing story.
Before the war, Bosnia had Christians, Muslims and Jews, Serbs, Croats and Bosnians all living together. That easier peace has not returned, but there is no more violence of war, and the peace is a daily job.
Sarajevo has a unique history in Europe and the world, for it is also here that the spark for the First World War was lit with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Shot by a Serbian nationalist in 1914, the Archduke’s murder heightened existing tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and led to an ultimatum then declaration of war. This triggered a complex system of alliances that ultimately brought the major European powers into war.
“People don’t want conflict,” insisted my guide, now a father himself. But how to keep the peace is up to each of us, he said.
We Are What We Think…and Eat
Walking down a familiar stretch of M Street in Georgetown in Washington DC, I noticed a new restaurant among the surrounding restaurants, all featuring foods from different regions of the world side by side in this half block—France, Afghanistan, India and an “Asian grill.” A half mile away are Mexican restaurants and across the street Ethiopian and Vietnamese restaurants. In this small neighborhood can be found restaurants with their chefs and staffs from most regions of the world.
The rich culinary offerings represent a heritage we have as Americans. Most of us at one point in our families’ histories came from immigrants arriving on the shore of this country that promised “liberty and justice for all.” Some began by starting restaurants with the food from their home countries.
America receives immigrants from 112 countries, according to 2016 statistics, a factor that has countered the declining population rates seen in many countries like Russia. U.S. immigration policy, however, continues to be debated and remains unresolved. Most Americans agree there need to be rational, enforceable immigration limits but with humane enforcement. Yet enforcement in the past year has never been as harsh and unwelcoming nor the national discourse as contentious, at least in my lifetime.
The discordant rhetoric also seeps into personal lives. I recently had conversations, one with an octogenarian, one with a young teenager—both included sentences beginning with a passionate “I hate…” The object of one was a political personage; the other a contemporary.
However justified hatred may seem, it doesn’t lead to the society we want to live in or to the actions that will build and benefit. Countering hatred can seem difficult, especially if the offense seems personal or existential, but hatred is a false foundation that cannot bear the weight of living. Hatred is as corrosive as any drug or poison or weapon to a person and to a society.
Hatred is countered thought by thought and action by action. Kindness, generosity, even if not reciprocated and even if not necessarily directed at the object of hate, can begin to fill thought and to crowd the hatred out.
Detecting the Counterfeit: Lies, Flimflam and the Real Deal
The swirl of political events spin in the headlines relating to wars and conflict, profound misdeeds, voting manipulations, deceit among leaders, all having profound consequences in my country and others.
I found myself typing words to focus my thoughts—lies, truth, love, counterfeit…Counterfeit, a word and idea to explore. “Counterfeit—An imitation intended to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively as genuine.”
How does one tell the truth from a lie, the real from the counterfeit in history, politics, and life? Is the answer only subjective, determined by what one wants to see and believe, an illusion propped up by those who agree with us or alternatively those who claim power over us? Such is the path of authoritarian regimes who rewrite history and events as they want them to be seen and recorded, who remove books, and therefore ideas, from the shelves, and eventually close down or limit free expression.
The best way to detect a counterfeit is to know the genuine article and have it at hand to compare. For example with currency, the U.S. Treasury goes to great lengths to make counterfeiting extremely difficult because of the intricacies in design and production. The texture and composition of the cotton and linen paper is unique with tiny red and blue micro-fibers embedded and with slightly raised printing and with color-shifting ink on larger bills when tilted towards the light, with numerals in the lower right that change color from copper to green, and a 3-D security ribbon on the $100 bills woven into the paper causing images of bells to move up and down or side to side within the ribbon.
Holding a bill to the light reveals some of these hidden features. Some bills have watermarks to the right of the portrait visible on both sides when held to light. Also, micro printed words such as USA are on certain bills, and all have exact detailed printing especially on the borders and seal.
The list continues of what is necessary for a bill to in fact be genuine U.S. currency. However, not everyone is vigilant when accepting currency, and these lapses of attention are what the fraudster is counting on when passing counterfeit money.
The safeguards in a democracy are equally fine-tuned and time-tested. These include rule of law, due process, independent judiciary, equal justice, free and fair elections, robust checks and balances on executive power, freedom of expression and the press, counters to disinformation and promotion of civic engagement. But if these safeguards are set aside or ignored, the real democracy will fade, and a counterfeit will emerge. In numbers of counterfeit democracies like Russia and Venezuela, elections are held but manipulated; opposition candidates are discouraged or even killed; the press is constrained, journalists detained or also killed, and the law is subject to the opinion of the ruler: “If I say it’s law, it is law.”
Freedom House, the U.S.-based non-governmental organization notes in its Principles for Safeguarding U.S. Democracy “…The United States, as the world’s most influential democracy, has an essential part to play in the global struggle for liberty. It has a unique capacity and a moral obligation to cultivate alliances with free nations and lend support to democracy advocates in authoritarian or transitional settings. Doing so ultimately protects the freedom, security, and prosperity of Americans by promoting a stable international order, preventing armed conflicts and failed states, and ensuring the support of like-minded global powers. The United States cannot play this role if the country’s own democratic institutions continue to erode, as it will not have the internal capacity or the international credibility.”
If citizens cease paying attention, if voices are silenced, if certain voters are hindered from voting, if rule of law is set aside and ignored, if courts fail to uphold laws and immunity gives unchecked power to the executive, then the counterfeit of democracy slips into place. The challenge for a counterfeit democracy is that it doesn’t have the true power of its citizens engaged. If counterfeit currency floods a country’s system, the value of the real currency becomes worthless, and runaway inflation results. A democracy which has lost its freedoms has lost its power.
“The truth will set you free,” the Bible assures, because real power derives only from what is true.