It has become a cliché that we have no foreign policy, but with 10,000 Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border, and talks set for Jan. 10 for the U.S. and Russia to discuss the matter, it seems in order to suggest that one is called for.

The most abiding lesson of history is that reality tends to impose itself, whatever idealistic or sanguine arrangements we try to replace it with.

A million pop music artists can put together a million charity concerts, bouncing around on stage for peace, unity and brotherhood, but the world remains a dangerous place.

The end of the year seems a good time to take stock.

The People’s Republic of China has emerged as the world’s foremost bully and likely aggressor. Much of the focus, correctly, has been on the increasingly imminent threat China poses to the security and independence of Taiwan; especially after its successful campaign to upend the established order in Hong Kong and effectively annex the city into the Chinese Communist fold, with all of the brutality and suppression that comes with that.

But there is more than just Taiwan at play. China wants Taiwan for both ideological and strategic reasons.

Beijing still maintains the fantasy that Taiwan is merely a renegade province whose state of rebellious independence serves as an infuriating thorn in the dragon’s paw, but also realizes that its very existence prevents China from realizing dreams of expansion and true blue-water naval power in the southwestern Pacific.

In other words: If tomorrow some satanic arrangement were hammered out to sacrifice Taiwan to Red China, Beijing would not be appeased, satisfied with only imposing misery within its own new borders.

Chinese expansionism is not limited to the Pacific, either. The Chinese government has expended a great deal of energy, resources and investment into Africa, the latest power to be attracted by the allure of the natural, still largely untapped wealth on that continent. They are now establishing their first-ever Atlantic naval base, in West Africa.

Why? And what, if anything, are we prepared to do about it? What can we do?

Turning our gaze north, we find an increasingly belligerent Russia. Russia has a good deal in common with China; both share a sort of saprophytic existence, with semi-free economies feeding off the carcass of a communist system, one which nevertheless still controls the reins of power in the latter.

Both countries also yearn to be more than what they are, to ascend as world powers with the ability to pursue expansionist ambitions. China has not enjoyed such a coveted position since the Ming Dynasty fell apart in the mid-17th century.

Russia, on the other hand, is ruled by a man who remembers when his country controlled the Communist world and shared superpower status with the U.S.

Vladimir Putin is a nostalgic man.

Russia has since been displaced as the world’s preeminent bully and, like all bullies, is resentful of the downgrade and so is clamoring for attention.

It is doing this by flexing its muscles in Eastern Europe and particularly at the Ukraine, which it already invaded and partially annexed in 2014, using the renewed threat of invasion as a bargaining chip to coerce the U.S. and Western Europe into denying the Ukraine full NATO membership and simultaneously agreeing to not expand NATO.

Telling the Ukraine what international organizations it can and can’t belong to, under threat of war, sounds an awful lot like China using its muscle to exclude Taiwan from the world community.

While the “do nothing” approach – the default in the absence of a cohesive foreign policy – is ill-advised, there is always the risk of overcompensating; doing “something” for the sake of doing something, which often results in things like blowing aspirin factories in Somalia to smithereens.

Furthermore, the Biden administration has largely tied its own hands and substantially weakened U.S. leadership ability on these issues through, among other things, the disastrously precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and caving on Nord Stream 2.

But ignoring these problems will not make them go away.

Like it or not, President Joe Biden needs to begin the long process of repairing America’s reputation and leadership, and a good starting place might be to take the lead in insisting on widespread diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and full membership for the Ukraine into NATO – to hell with the Russians.

Which of course assumes the United States is prepared to adopt a realistic, cohesive foreign policy, and still has the ability to implement it.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.