Matt Pottinger played a crucial, behind-the-scenes role in the Trump administration’s break with decades of bipartisan agreement about engagement with China. Pottinger felt that U.S. leaders had deluded themselves into thinking that wrapping China more tightly into the U.S. economic orbit would change the way Beijing governed. He came to these views in an unusual way for a China policymaker. He began his career as a journalist in China for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. (We overlapped at the Journal but didn’t work together on stories.) After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he enlisted in the Marines at age 31 and worked in Afghanistan for Gen. Michael Flynn, who later became President Trump’s first national security advisor and recruited Pottinger to be his Asia chief at the National Security Council. Pottinger became a skilled bureaucratic operator. He outlasted three Trump national security advisors and was ultimately named deputy national security advisor.
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