It’s one of the peculiar exigencies of American political practice that one must maintain a certain coyness, up to a point, when quizzed about a potential presidential run. We are approaching that point in the cycle where deliberate ambiguity starts gradually transitioning to more concrete commitments.

To wit, Nikki Haley seems poised to formally announce her bid for the White House, with several sources telling us she will make a formal announcement on Feb. 15. So it is probably a good time for the country to start figuring out what we ought to be looking for in a possible new president. Something other than “not Trump, or Biden, or Clinton,” as valid as all three of those criteria are.

Haley offers up some impressive credentials; she is a former governor, and I never tire of pointing out that governors make better presidents, from either party, than senators or reality TV stars. She checks the right demographic boxes, for what it’s worth – young, attractive, female, bi-racial. She’s smart and issue-focused, with an impressive record of public achievement. She could potentially pull the Republican Party off the populist ledge and back to its conservative hearth. Yes, that’s all well and good.

But her most impressive, and most important, quality is that, unlike so many other aspirants to that office, including the last few occupants, she sports some serious foreign policy chops, having served as America’s ambassador to the United Nations. When one is evaluating a candidate for the nation’s commander in chief, competency and strength in international affairs is – must be – paramount. Economic mistakes, as bad as they can be, are far easier to rectify at a later time than a nuclear strike.

The most critical area in which unclouded vision and a firm hand at the foreign relations tiller is required is the People’s Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China under Xi Jinping. Gen. Michael Minihan, who heads up the USAF’s Air Mobility Command, recently sent out a memo to his subordinates, letting them know he fully expected to be in a fight with Red China over Taiwan by 2025. He was blunt and focused. “I hope I am wrong,” he writes. “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.” He goes on to tell his people he wants them “ready to fight and win in the first island chain” off the eastern Asian mainland, and to pursue weapons training with “unrepentant lethality.” Refreshing. Less so was the spate of apoplexy his comments spurred from the Beltway.

But he is not off the mark. U.S. Navy Adm. Phil Davidson told Congress in 2021 he expected China to invade Taiwan by 2027. The Taiwanese themselves are no more optimistic. A former Taiwanese foreign minister I spoke with while there last summer said he fully expected a Chinese invasion by 2025.

Ian Easton, the brilliant and accomplished scholar who is one of the most credible experts on China in this country, wrote in his masterful book “The Final Struggle: Inside China’s Global Strategy”… well, a lot of really important things, but this one stuck with me: “…it would be a mistake to believe that Xi and his comrades are not trying to create the world of tomorrow. They are bending the arc of history in their desired direction and, so far, few strong hands are pulling in the opposite direction. There is no ceiling to the ambitions of the CCP. But there is also no floor to the regime’s fear, insecurity and paranoia. That blend of ambition and fear makes for a venomous foreign policy.” Indeed.

This is not going entirely unnoticed. Aside from the astute warnings from the generals, the new House of Representatives in Congress has stood up a special, and vital, committee with a singular focus: the People’s Republic of China. It is being headed up not by some fringe populist, but by the remarkable, smart, and capable Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Missouri), a promising rising star in the GOP. Here in Colorado, freshman House Representative Brandi Bradley has introduced a bill prohibiting agents of the PRC (as well as Russia, or any country deemed a state sponsor of terrorism, for that matter) from purchasing agricultural land, mineral rights or water rights in the state of Colorado. Suspicious and potentially strategic purchases which just happen to be one of the subjects of inquest by the new bipartisan Congressional Committee.

What is needed, and what has been sorely missing for quite some time now, is a clear-eyed vision of what American foreign policy ought to be, and a crystallized commitment to safeguarding America’s interests. It’s a vision and commitment emancipated from the myopic vulgarity of partisan talk-show reductionism. This is the standard by which we should be evaluating presidential candidates.

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