With Trump, the ‘Elders’ have found their man

A debate is under way about how best to respond to North Korea’s belligerence, says Richard Haass, President of The Council of Foreign Relations.

Ideas range from a cyber attack to weaken North Korean political and military assets to relisting the country as a state sponsor of terrorism, presumably accompanied by new sanctions.

But they don’t go far enough, says Haass. 

No wait, that debate was underway way back in 2014 after North Korea’s cyberattack on Sony, “an attack designed to punish the firm for making a movie that humiliated Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un” Haas wrote in The Wall Street Journal back then in an article titled How to end the North Korean Threat.

I guess the old Tea Party Trump was not part of that discussion. Surely he is now as Haass has presented a related article citing the “growing consensus” this past March. Clearly the “growing consensus” now contains President Donald Trump.

{mosads}Compared to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Pearl Harbor and 9/11, The Interview, a trashy, thoughtless, B-movie at best starring James Franco and Seth Rogen, might seem less than adequate as an impetus for global war. But here we are, three months into the Trump administration and once again on the verge of it.

The successful Tomahawk missile attack on Syria seems to have changed the heart of Tea Party Trump. 

And the removal of the “alt-right” apprentices in the White House to be replaced by a sterling professional lineup of military and foreign policy professionals brings the predictable result. As the phrase goes, the military always sees the military solution and Trump assures us that he trusts their judgment.

Was there ever any doubt? After two years of ragging on the Eastern Establishment, NATO and “the military industrial complex” Trump has become it’s avatar, it’s “Maximum Leader.”

“Let me propose an alternative to those who see Trump as Hitler sans the moustache (although retaining the bad haircut). Stick with Germany, its villainous past making it an agreeable foil for us Anglo-Saxons. Rather than focusing on the Third Reich, however, consider the Second. That’s right: Donald Trump as Kaiser Wilhelm II,” writes the distinguished historian Andrew Bacevich.

“He loves generals,” says Bacevich.

It does clear up a few things. The romance of Steve Bannon and the other “alt right” types was clearly a scam. Time will tell us how they will respond. They know now they were played, they are angry, they have a lot of followers and they bring much of the heartland with them.

I talked recently to a scholar with distinguished service in foreign policy and he said that Council of Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission types would want Hillary Clinton to be President as she is a ‘path walker’ and if an issue in foreign policy came up she would call them and ask them what to do. Trump on the other hand was hard to read. He could get us into a nuclear war or he could win a Nobel Peace Prize, he said. Maybe both on the same day.

The mystery has been resolved. The Elders, as they were regularly referred to on The X Files; they of that mysterious dark matter force which flows invisibly through the military, political, industrial and economic universe, have finally found their man: President Donald Trump.

But this time it may be different as this time America has found its man as well: Thomas Jefferson.

Back in 2003 when President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had determined to invade Iraq a small group of Vermonters including a retired college professor and a well known novelist with a little help from Ambassador George Kennan in his hundredth year, cited Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions which suggested that if the federal government was breaking constitutional law as Jefferson suggested it had done with the Alien and Sedition Acts, then the states had no responsibility to follow the federal directive.

So Vermont need not participate in any way in the invasion. They proposed sending their own Vermont representative to the UN.

From then until now this strategy which pits states, cities and regions against the will of the federal government caught on like a prairie fire in red states during the Obama presidency. 

And now with Trump in the catbird seat it awakens again in blue states and on the left. Cities across America are declaring themselves to be “sanctuary cities.” Critics like Fay Voshell have called these acts of secession. California governor Jerry Brown has even called for California to be declared a “sanctuary state.”

“While Donald Trump is working to make America great again, Democrats and politically left establishments around the country are uniting together under an unexpected cause,” writes Oregon essayist Matt Joyner. “With each passing week, blue cities and states are more determined than ever to find a way for their political ideologies and beliefs to manifest themselves in local and regional legislation. The best example of this can be seen as mayors of major metropolitan cities are rejecting the call to end sanctuary cities.”

And suppose they had a war and Seattle didn’t come? This past week, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture published an article by Justin Raimondo titled The Road to Cascadia.

The author quotes a 1994 book, Breakup: The Coming End of Canada and the Stakes for America by Lansing Lamont, Time magazine’s chief Canadian correspondent in the 1970’s and a managing director for Canadian Affairs at the Americas Society.

“Lament envisions a ‘Pacific alliance whose other members [include] Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington,’ a postindustrial economic powerhouse rich in raw materials with a gross annual product of some $280 billion,” writes Raimondo.

“‘In short,” writes Lamont, “Cascadia or Pacifica, as the new region was variously tagged, constitute [s] a perfect vehicle for the gradual assimilation of Canada’s drifting provinces into the American matrix.’”

No wait. That was first published by Chronicles in July, 1997. 

Now after 20 years reprinted it this past week as its vision and premise has suddenly become, thanks to Donald Trump’s “words and actions . . . untethered to principle” (Bacevich’s phrase), shockingly relevant.

Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. 

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.