By zeroing out the PLA’s political power, Xi has concentrated a degree of authority that none of his predecessors, including Mao Zedong, ever had. Xi’s power apparently came from fighting and winning a vast, mysterious internal party struggle against all other factions. East vs WestIt is a very different environment from the Western tradition that traces back to the Roman Empire. The foundational stories of Western civilization, the Iliad and the Odyssey, written about a century after the Battle of Kadesh, are based on episodes from these conflicts. Perhaps an extension of American power on different foundations — no longer white and Old Western, but multiethnic and liberal.