In 1984, during the darkest period of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s Stalinist rule, I visited Targovishte, over an hour northwest of the capital, Bucharest, on the Wallachian plain. It was a hellish town of mud-strewn streets, a few battered cars, without any decent place to eat and garbage…

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that the purpose of China’s People’s Liberation Army is not to protect its homeland but to “expand a Chinese empire.” Earlier this month, he warned China not to treat the South China Sea “as its maritime empire.” Pompeo is actually way behind the…