In my previous diary, I asked what an act of war looks like. I have no desire to see war, in the typical sense. For that matter, I don’t want to see another war, at all. The stakes are becoming too high.

But, if what China did can be seen as an act of war, what do you do about it? What do you do to a country that literally invaded every country on the planet with a virus?

Simply walk away from doing business with them. You don’t fill the room with rhetoric about how the enemy needs to be punished. Some might say that’s okay, but that kind of response, before any meaningful response only esccalates one problem into a bigger problem: a shooting war.

China may do that without the need for the rhetoric, anyway. If China views a bunch of countries, say the G20 group of nations stepping away from trading with them, China may play an endgame against the rest of the world. They do have some capability of projecting that power, by use of ballistic nuclear missiles, and there is evidence that China has been playing with nuclear bomb testing, which is forbidden by all the signatories of the global test ban treaty, including China.

With all the protests in Hong Kong, mainland China, and all the economic problems China is facing, one can’t discount something worse happening. China’s Communist Party is a tyrannical dictatorship. One man, Xi Jinping controls all of that power, including the Chinese military. It doesn’t matter how he is up against a wall, but that he is up against the wall, and some things can take a nasty turn when the absolute leader of a big, powerful country is facing that. He has no one else to blame, except himself, but that becomes our problem, depending on what one man does in China.

I don’t have the answer, but I remember a saying about something to do with kicking a tiger’s ass, but you had better have a plan to deal with his teeth, afterwards. I translate that to mean we walk away from China, but we need to be prepared for the next problem. And that next problem is inevitable, whatever we do.

My wife and I have had some pretty interesting discussions. Hers have been on the virus, how the medical community handles it, and how it affects us. Mine have mostly been on the after effects and the cause of the problem. I’m more concerned on what happens next. The disease is already out. There are people who can deal with the medical aspect. It’s the people who will give up their lives trying to defend us that concerns me.