Commentary Back during the latter half of the 1980s, what many called an existential threat to America’s future seemed at hand—the financial juggernaut that Japan had then become. For a spell, Japanese investors and interests were seemingly buying up America, something decried by major public and private figures alike (among them the late, great Paul Harvey, who warned that Japan was buying America “with our money”). These days, we have seen a somewhat similar ascendance of China, now fairly widely viewed as the main threat to the United States of today. Unlike Japan—where the “threat” was almost entirely of financial hegemony, that vanquished nation of World War 2 having no expansionary or military designs anywhere—China’s ambitions come as a package deal. Not only does China seek to reestablish the lost glory of an empire (at least in its part of the world) financially and as the main economic powerhouse, but …