Kontextmaschine

23rd February 2017

Post with 12 notes

Spinning the Cylinder with Michael Anton

So two recent things on Michael “Decius” Anton, Machiavellian “Flight 93 Election” author turned White House pet intellectual.

First, the man’s own foreign policy manifesto and then this beat-sweetener from Vanity Fair.

Let’s start with his “America and the Liberal International Order”. Basically it’s his introductory remarks to the “foreign policy community”, arguing that the course he’s charting is well within their norms, practices, and ideals. As for what that course is, it’s down in the “Reforming the Liberal International Order” section. I read that once and got the sense it was a real monumental shift, but when I went to write it down I couldn’t really put my finger on what it consisted of and honestly I still can’t, which is about what you’d expect from a diplomatic theorist with a Straussian background, I suppose.

Basically giving up on democracy promotion as a goal in itself, reserving it for when democratization furthers other goals, “in a place where and at a time when we have the capacity to water it, and it is in our interest to do so”?

Orienting around controlling a (possibly illiberal) periphery for the sake of a core “liberal international order”, identified with old NATO, “The ‘liberal international order’ is thus better termed the ‘liberal rich-country order’ or—if you prefer foreign policy jargon—the ‘liberal functioning-core order.’”?

I mean I get that, but it’s really hard to picture what it means in practice. South Korea was an authoritarian periphery for most of the Cold War, now it’s a reasonably liberal international core, Turkey was a kind of authoritarian periphery even when it was in old NATO, now it’s becoming less Western liberal core because it’s becoming more democratic. What would this doctrine do, or have done with that? If Wahhabists AND Communists both rise in Indonesia or Malaysia, what does that mean to the US and how does it react under this operating philosophy?

But I guess a lot of diplomacy is about strategic vagueness to be filled in later. In pettier notes:

• His line that “Since [Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid], we have suffered two mass casualty attacks on American territory.” I assume that’s Pearl Harbor and 9/11. And like, fair, the Philippines had upgraded from “territory” to “commonwealth” in the decade before the capture of Manila and the Bataan Death March, but they weren’t independent yet.
• Read the “Prestige” section, about prestige/contempt and how they’re generated, and how they affect negotiating success, and alliance-building, and influence on vital regions, and try to tell me that’s not a design doc for a Paradox grand strategy game.
• In that same section, he invokes the wisdom of Osama bin Laden, Thucydides, and Steve “one observer” Sailer, in that order.

Now the beat-sweetener. Tells what his job is (N.S.C. senior communications director), what that involves (distilling Trump’s foreign policy “message” and figuring out how various state ideological apparatuses can promote it), who had an equivalent role before him (Ben Rhodes, apparently). Gives some color: guy likes Machiavelli, guy likes suits. One colleague says “huh, really?”, a mentor says “I could see it”. Is he alt-right? Nah but there’s overlap. One guy says the themes carry over and the difference is sophistication.

The one really interesting thing here is the recurring theme of California. The mentor talks about Anton’s elegaic take on the lost Republican middle class California. Anton gives quote to confirm it. An essay is linked for more support. And remember quoting Sailer. Remember what I said about Sailer the other day, how the California transformation explains him.

So, that’s Trumpian intellectualism: not Breitbart, but Sailer.

Tagged: Michael AntonPublius Decius MusSteve Sailer