Commentary
When the noted writer and philosopher—and ardent atheist—Voltaire lay dying, a priest was supposed to have attempted a deathbed conversion; but when the priest urged him to renounce Satan, Voltaire replied, “Now is not the time to be making enemies.”
I felt a similar experience when I attended a pair of back-to-back conferences last month in Vietnam and Indonesia. Both meetings brought together foreign policy and national security experts from the United States and these two countries to discuss how Southeast Asia and Washington could expand cooperation in the face of growing Chinese aggression in the region, particularly in the South China Sea….