"We've Been Here Before"

 

To better understand the Malignant Fascist's destructive obsession with Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal being annexed by the U.S., the New Republic's Seva Gunitsky looks at the right-wing model espoused by James Burnham generations ago. Doubtless without studying Burnham's writing or even being aware of him, the MF nonetheless has internalized his theory of international relations:

"We’ve been here before. In the spring of 1941, as Hitler’s armies swept across Europe, American conservative James Burnham published a book outlining his vision for a new global order: a post-democratic world centered around a few powerful blocs he called “super-states.” These great powers would exercise complete dominion over their designated regions while locked in perpetual rivalry with each other. The United States, Burnham thought, should “draw a ring” around the Western hemisphere, securing the Panama Canal and reducing Canada to “a satellite.” This new order would be governed not by international law but by personal dealings among the great powers, who would control the sovereignty of weaker states and suspend it as they wished.

George Orwell used Burnham’s bleak vision as the geopolitical setting for 1984, in which three giant autocratic empires live in a state of permanent conflict. And now, the real-world global order is starting to take on a disturbingly similar shape.

Once we make sense of his preferences for the post-liberal order, Trump’s treatment of Canada—but also of Russia, Greenland, and others—begins to make a lot more sense. Trump’s approach to the international system is a strange blend of neo-feudal hierarchy with transactional politics guided by five principles: dominance of great powers, conditionality of alliances, weaponization of trade, irrelevance of institutions, and personalization of diplomacy." (our emphasis)

The MF's "principles," such as they are for a selfish ignoramus, are also being applied domestically, where his political alliances shift depending on loyalty tests, where his undermining of institutions and the rule of law and his narcissistic, retribution-filled agenda are what characterize his regime. Gunitsky's entire article is well worth the read. 

(photo: Jared C. Hilton, Getty Images)