“When you're dealing with a Marxist-Leninist regime, the more you're trying to accommodate them, the more you pull your punches, the more aggressive they become,” says @RepGallagher on the opening day of @VoCommunism’s China Forum.

“You know Eisenhower, in his first speech… as a presidential candidate in ‘52… talks about the totalitarian mind and makes the very basic point:

Regimes like this, need in order to survive, they need to expand aggressively externally, and they constantly, through salami slicing and other tactics, are expanding their repressive nature beyond their own boundaries. If we forget that fact, and if we're constantly pulling punches for fear of provocation, we're actually enabling more aggression.

… I'm not saying never negotiate or talk to the CCP. I mean, that would be illogical. But do so from a position of strength, and do so with a clear-eyed understanding of who's sitting across from you on the other side of the table, and at least remind yourself that in modern history, the CCP has violated every agreement that it's signed up to, and so therefore you should be very skeptical about things that are hashed out.”

He dubs this idea, i.e. the more you accommodate a totalitarian regime, the more aggressive they become, the "Pottinger paradox."