Commentary When Puyi—the last emperor of China—emerged from the Forbidden City in Beijing, he realized that he ruled over nothing. He was surrounded by a fractious republic; the world he thought was limitless and his was gone. By 2022, the United States was emerging from the Forbidden City of Washington and finding itself geographically isolated: the Americas, once its bailiwick, were no longer in its grasp. The Western Hemisphere had moved significantly under the sway of that other “forbidden city,” Beijing. Unlike Puyi, who had no control over his early upbringing and isolation, the United States almost willfully allowed the Western Hemisphere to slip from its influence over the past century, particularly after World War II. The Americas were taken for granted; they were not the focus of the first-rate political, intelligence, or security minds of Washington, nor of U.S. budgets or diplomacy. But if dominance or loss of the …
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