Success Quote by Steve Forbes

Forbes is doing a very business-guy thing here: turning geopolitics into a case study in botched management, with “properly handle” doing the heavy lifting. It’s a phrase that sounds prudent and procedural, like a boardroom postmortem, while quietly smuggling in an argument for American primacy as the default setting of world order. China isn’t framed as a partner, rival, or civilization-state with its own logic; it’s a “challenge” to be “handled,” a problem that implies an owner.

The historical analogy is the real persuasion engine. By invoking Germany and Japan, Forbes reaches for the most morally freighted 20th-century examples available, collapsing a messy chain of events into a cautionary fable: America hesitated, mishandled, paid dearly. That move borrows the emotional authority of World War II without having to litigate the specifics of Versailles, imperial Japan, or U.S. isolationism. It’s less history than a rhetorical shortcut designed to make hawkishness feel like responsibility.

The subtext is also domestic. This is a pitch to an American audience that wants firmness without the stigma of belligerence: “We must not make this same mistake” casts escalation as prevention, even as it leaves undefined what “properly handle” means - containment, engagement, industrial policy, military posture, or all of the above. Coming from a businessman, the warning reads like a market memo: ignore the rising competitor now, and you’ll pay later. The moral lesson doubles as strategic branding for a harder line on China, dressed up as learned experience.