As the 2016 campaign season opened, I was an optimistic Republican voter. The party was blessed with an abundant crop of attractive, serious, and qualified presidential candidates ready to move the country away from what I saw as the disastrous national security policies of the Obama administration and prevent what I feared most, a third Clinton administration.

Then there was Donald Trump. Though I welcomed the long-overdue things he was saying about China and North Korea, I did not see him as the desirable, or even conceivable, GOP standard-bearer. I considered him crass, crude, gratuitously cruel, and generally unsuited for the presidency. I added my name to the original “Never Trump” letter though I would have written it differently. Along with three dozen or so cosigners, I attended a foreign policy briefing by the Clinton campaign, which was followed by an invitation to join her campaign. I declined.

If Trump were ever to secure the nomination, I thought, then he would surely lose the election and usher in a return of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their coterie to the White House. From the standpoint of national security alone, I saw that as the worst possible outcome: A family member said I suffered from an extreme case of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

When he won the GOP nomination anyway, I despaired at what seemed a certain Clinton victory. Based on the often self-immolating ways Trump campaigned, it even seemed at times that he was trying to throw the election to Clinton. I urged other Republican office-holders with bipartisan appeal, such as John Kasich, to run a write-in campaign. As none rose to the challenge, I desperately looked to the Electoral College mechanism somehow to stop the universally-predicted Clinton victory.

If some third-party candidate could win at least one state’s electoral votes, then Clinton might be denied the necessary 270 and the contest would go to the House of Representatives. A Republican majority there would choose the next president, and I believed it would not be someone named either Trump or Clinton.

As things stood, this would become known as “the impeachment election” no matter which of the two deeply-flawed candidates won. Without any realistic hope of a deus ex macchina to rescue the country from the certainty of a bitterly divisive four years, I resigned myself to the futile gesture of writing in Kasich’s name.

But then, something happened to change my mind and my vote. One morning in late October, I was listening to WPFW, Washington DC’s excellent blues-and-jazz radio station during one of its political call-in hours. I was startled to hear a series of self-identified African-American women—the key demographic in the District’s electorate—disparaging Hillary Clinton and urging voters to choose Jill Stein, the candidate of the Green Party who was listed on the DC ballot.

There, I thought, was the last-ditch answer to my personal voting dilemma, and I cast my ballot for Stein in November. At worst, I felt, it was no more an empty gesture than writing-in someone’s name would have been. And if those radio callers were representative of the larger constituency and Stein actually won in DC, maybe our three electoral votes could make history. Such was the effect of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

Like Trump himself, I was surprised at the result and relieved that the nation at least had avoided an encore of the Clintons. I remained anxious at how the implausible new president would perform but resolved to support him. I hoped that his better instincts would prevail—especially his no-nonsense approach to economic and security challenges in East Asia—and that the awesome responsibilities of the presidency would temper his personal rough edges. I wanted my grandsons to be able to look up to their new president, if not as an inspirational super-hero, then at least as a decent role model.

I urged others who had signed the Never Trump letter to accept the new reality and offer their services to the fledgling administration. Given the critical challenges it would face, and Trump’s lack of experience, I argued it was time for “all hands on deck.” Despite the vehement objections of some family members, I followed my own advice when I saw some of the admirable people being appointed in the Asia offices and offered to help wherever I could. I was subsequently informed I was under consideration for a moderately prestigious and potentially important position. Had it been offered, I would have accepted it and performed as I had in the earlier administrations I served: offering unvarnished policy recommendations for a tougher, more clear-eyed approach to Communist China. But, as months passed with no movement on the appointment, I decided the administration did not consider the position so important after all. Since I wasn’t interested in a sinecure, I withdrew my name from consideration. (The job remains filled by an Obama administration holdover.)

Meanwhile, I had pretty much forgotten about that curious series of pro-Stein calls ostensibly from DC voters—until this past January when National Public Radio reported on a New York Times story about Russian disinformation in the United States. It said that an outlet called Radio Sputnik (formerly Radio Moscow) was broadcasting messages on three popular music stations in Kansas City. It reported that since 2016, Washington, DC had also been the recipient of Sputnik broadcasts—around the clock on two stations, AM and FM, at an expenditure of more than $2 million by the Russian government. I checked to see if WPFW was one of the sponsored stations—it was not. But the story aroused my curiosity about Russian activities in Washington’s popular media.

I looked into the December 2018 report on Russian election propaganda and disinformation commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It stated: “No . . . group received as much attention as Black Americans, whose voter turnout has been historically crucial to the election of Democrats. Russia's influence campaign used an array of tactics aiming to reduce their vote for Hillary Clinton.”

The report further discussed how the disinformation campaign utilized social media: “The Black-targeted pages . . . lobbied for votes for Jill Stein.” That seemed pretty close to a smoking gun indicating I probably had been influenced indirectly by a Russian disinformation campaign. I wasn’t one of the targeted voters, but by tuning in to the black radio station when I did, I caught the ricochet and acted on it.

This year’s electoral decision for me will be simpler and clearer, but no less painful given the ongoing bitter divisions over the Trump presidency among family, friends, and respected colleagues, reflecting the unhappy reality in the rest of the country. The widespread intolerance and lack of respect for those with different perspectives, all claiming the moral and Constitutional high ground, sadly echo the deep national rancor over Vietnam and civil rights that tore America apart in the 1960s. (Fortuitously, though, that was how I met my wife: we were introduced as “the only two thinking people in Boston who support Lyndon Johnson on the war.” We also supported LBJ on civil rights and the “war on poverty.”)

Over the past four years, it became clear that the 2020 election would devolve into a choice between a more likable, conventional, “respectable” person whose policies, personnel, and party orientation I nevertheless view as dangerous for America—especially on national security—and Trump. Sure, Trump has many personal faults but he also has the policies and personnel I see as demonstrably well-suited to meet the nation’s economic and security challenges.

The starting point for me is Communist China—which James Clapper, President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2011, constituted the “greatest mortal threat” to America. Russia, he said, was second. I agree with that harsh assessment of both hostile dictatorial powers and held that position long before the Trump presidency.

So does the Trump administration. The National Security Strategy that it published in the first year of Trump’s presidency described China and Russia as major potential adversaries bent on upending the U.S.-led international order and replacing it with aggressive authoritarian systems led by Communists in Beijing and former Communists in Moscow (the reference to Communists is mine, not from the report).

The strategy cited China’s “influence operations and implied military threats to persuade other states to heed its political and security agenda; . . . [i]ts efforts to build and militarize outposts in the South China Sea [that] endanger the free flow of trade, threaten the sovereignty of other nations, and undermine regional stability; . . . and [its] rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region and provide China a freer hand there.”

For all Trump’s unfortunate flattery of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin (along with Kim Jong-un and a few other dictators), the policies he has enabled and authorized his appointees to carry out against China and Russia overall have been sensible and tough-minded. What started out as a trade war and security challenge with China has gradually expanded through a series of administration actions and speeches by top officials into a veritable human-rights crusade with the explicit goal of regime change in China. The Trump administration has brought the objective of American policy back to where it all started under Richard Nixon. He wrote this in his 1967 Foreign Affairs article:

Any American policy toward Asia must come urgently to grips with the reality of China . . . recognizing the present and potential danger from Communist China, and taking measures designed to meet that danger . . . The world cannot be safe until China changes . . . by accepting the basic rules of international civility.

Unless the threat from China was handled properly, he wrote, it “will pose the greatest danger of a confrontation which could escalate into World War III.”

Having served in the Nixon administration, as well as those of George W. Bush and Obama (as a holdover for a year), I have been absorbed with foreign policy and national security for decades. The Trump administration is the first one in my professional life that has come to grips with the multi-level existential challenges Communist China poses to the United States and the West. Those who share that perspective but find much to dislike, or even fear, about Trump will have to grapple with the same choice I am confronting.

Robert Gates, who has served eight administrations and is widely seen as a model of professional rectitude in public service, recently confronted his own personal dilemma. In a NewsHour interview with Judy Woodruff, he was highly critical of Trump’s governing style, “It's quite clear that being a unifying president is pretty low on the priority of our current incumbent. I think he is a divider, and I think he does so quite consciously.”

At the end of the interview, Woodruff returned to the subject.

1. Judy Woodruff: Last thing I want to ask you about is what's happening in November.

You, in your last book, wrote of Joe Biden, former Vice President Biden, that he had been wrong on virtually every important foreign policy or national security issue of the last four decades.

So, you clearly have strong views about his policy chops. You have also, though, said that you have questions about President Trump's character . . [E]arlier in this interview . . . you spoke about dividing the American people. Which, if it comes down to policy positions vs. character, which one matters more?

2. Robert Gates: Well, I think that's what the American people are going to decide in November.

3. Judy Woodruff: And what about what Robert Gates thinks?

4. Robert Gates: What Robert Gates thinks, he will keep to himself.

5. Judy Woodruff: All right, we will leave it at that.

(LAUGHTER)

Policy positions vs. character, which matters more? Stirring divisiveness among the American people vs. consistently getting national security and foreign policy wrong--which is more perilous to the nation? The answers are more nuanced and complex than the question suggests, which is no doubt why Gates’ response was an enigmatic chuckle.

There are many facets to character--honesty, integrity, empathy, compassion, courage, loyalty, steadfastness. And some qualities grouped under the character label might better be defined as features of personality--dignity, courtesy, friendliness, cheerfulness, sense of humor, likability, even sex appeal (see John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton).

Similarly, there is a plethora of policies—foreign and domestic—on which voters have almost an infinite variety of views. For me, national security is the ultimate concern--whether the United States is forced, or blunders, into a major war; if so, with whom; the prospect of victory, defeat, or stalemate; and the human, material, and economic costs. But, for others, economic security, educational opportunity, social justice, law and order, public health, environmental concerns, gun control, abortion, racial equality, threats to our democratic institutions are the most urgent and pressing issues.

All are valid. And one can be simultaneously concerned with some or all those domestic issues—as I am, liberal on some, conservative on others—and with the existential national security question as well. But, ultimately, priorities must be established and choices must be made, even if only between two unpalatable alternatives.

Voters sometimes fail to keep in mind that when they cast a vote for president, they are choosing more than an individual personality. They are selecting a set of policies associated with one political party or the other, often but not always enshrined in the party platform. Even more importantly, they are tying the nation’s future to a set of people who come into office with the president--staff, cabinet officers, outside advisers. Sometimes the occupant of the Oval Office has a history of established principles and policies which he draws upon to direct the actions of his subordinates in the administration. At other times, since a president cannot be an expert on everything (even if he thinks he is), he will rely heavily on the knowledge, experience, and predilections of those who work for him.

The proof of a president’s performance, and the requisite praise or blame, is in either what he directs his administration to do, or what he enables and authorizes it to do. In the end, the president is responsible for what his administration actually does and the outcome of its policies and actions. The bottom line in this election for me is that the policy choices of previous administrations have demonstrably failed in preventing the crisis we are now in with China—and Trump is the first president to begin turning things around, albeit in his own disruptive manner. It seems far more likely that his administration will continue on that course than that a Biden administration will reverse the earlier Clinton-Bush-Obama-Biden policies and follow the Trump way. This is one time when, for me, the better course is not to change horses in mid-stream.

In my lifetime, I have seen the defeat of Naziism in Germany, Fascism in Italy and Spain, and Imperialism in Japan, through a massively destructive global war; then the downfall of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the relatively “peaceful” transition of the Cold War. Collectively, hundreds of millions of lives were lost or otherwise destroyed in both world confrontations. During those titanic struggles, domestic issues had to be put aside until the existential conflicts were resolved.

I believe we are at another such potentially cataclysmic turning point and that the primary danger is from a powerful and aggressive Communist China—with the potential, as Nixon wrote, of igniting a third world war—followed by the threat from an economically weaker but equally aggressive and nuclear-armed Russia. We are already mired in a new Cold War with both hostile powers. The threats must be managed or ended through economic, diplomatic, technological, and informational means similar to, but more advanced and sophisticated than, the non-kinetic instruments employed in Cold War I.

Through a series of actions and policy statements, the Trump administration seems committed to pursuing that critical national security agenda—including the unprecedented explicit goal of ending the Chinese Communist regime after four decades of misguided and self-defeating accommodationist policies. I greatly fear that a change of administrations in Washington at this juncture would halt that progress and return us to the failed engagement approach of earlier administrations of both parties, most recently the Obama-Biden team.

There are foreign policy issues where I have disagreed strongly with Trump’s decisions—in virtually every case where he has overridden the advice of his national security team. I called his abandonment of the Kurds in Syria a “debacle”—though it was in large part the result of his earlier mistake in not having turned around the abysmal situation left by the Obama-Biden administration that caused four hundred thousand Syrian deaths.

Joe Biden certainly seems a decent and compassionate human being and projects more empathy and personal caring than does Donald Trump. He might even be fun to have a beer with. But the history of his judgment on national security decisionmaking—as attested by former Defense Secretary Gates who served in the Obama administration with him—is extremely worrisome at this time of global challenge.

Gates evaded Judy Woodruff’s question on prioritizing national security and personal character—which sometimes go together, but not always. For me, war and peace trumps all. Whatever his personality and character flaws, Trump, by relying on his foreign policy team and giving them a relatively free hand, is enabling unparalleled sound policies on China.

So, I will cast my vote:

—for the American workers whose jobs and livelihood have been destroyed by China’s dishonesty and U.S. officials’ naivete on trade and economic relations

—for the Western entrepreneurs, scientists, and scholars who toil and create, only to have their intellectual property stolen and exploited by Chinese entities

—for the American sailors and airmen who risk their lives each day to forestall Chinese aggression and withstand belligerent threats to send their ships and planes to the bottom of the South China Sea for enforcing international law and freedom of the seas—and for their families

—for the Uighur people who are being crushed in concentration camps in East Turkestan/Xinjiang

—for the North Korean people imprisoned in similar gulags by a Pyongyang regime kept in power by its protector in Beijing

—for the Tibetan and southern Mongolian people subject to persecution and cultural genocide

—for the members of Falun Gong whose organs are removed and harvested as punishment for their spiritual beliefs

—for the Christians who are persecuted for practicing their religion

—for the untold numbers of Chinese in China and the Chinese students and scholars in the West who, along with their families, are being watched, harassed, and threatened for questioning Beijing’s policies or admiring those in the West

—for the people of Hong Kong whose limited freedoms are daily being extinguished

—for the people of Taiwan who live in constant fear of Chinese missiles and bombs descending on their cities

—for the countries of Southeast Asia whose maritime sovereignty and resources are being absorbed by Chinese expansionism

For those and other reasons, I will vote against Communist China and for the administration that is most likely to stand up to it. I hope my grandchildren will understand why in good conscience I will vote for Trump this time. If he wins, I hope he will keep the personnel and policies governing his administration’s approach to Asia, while striving over the next four years to live up to the personal and professional standards they and we expect in our president.

If Biden wins, I hope he will see the merit in Trump's Asia policy and retain many of the key personnel responsible for it. I will perform my civic duty as I did during both the Trump and Obama administrations, offering public praise or criticism where I believe warranted, and providing abundant gratuitous advice on how the new president should govern the country and run the world.

Joseph Bosco served as China Country Desk Officer in the office of the secretary of defense, a nonresident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States. He is presently a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and a fellow of the Institute for Corean-American Studies (ICAS).

Image: Reuters