Honey Badger´s War

A lot of material like the above was recently posted on YouTube, suggesting that Donald Trump´s disgraced ex-advisor Steve Bannon is back in full force. The timing cannot be a coincidence: Trump have started a virtual “trade war” against China, while the democracy protests in Hong Kong are gaining momentum. The first interview with Bannon was made last year at an “undisclosed location” somewhere in Texas, but hasn´t been released until now. The second was made recently and promotes a forthcoming film produced by Bannon attacking the Chinese-owned mobile phone company Huawei. Despite Bannon´s fall from Trump´s grace, it seems that the former national security advisor still has some allies left and wants to play a bigger role in the near future as informal chief strategist of American geopolitical moves against the Middle Kingdom.

Bannon is often portrayed as an “isolationist”, despite his constant anti-Chinese rhetoric. After watching the video clips above, I don´t think anyone can claim that again in good conscience. Rather, Bannon comes across as a strident interventionist and Cold Warrior (even including the 60´s and 70´s anti-Communist and human rights rhetoric), but against the People´s Republic of China rather than Russia (the enemy of choice of the US foreign policy establishment). He says that the United States is a Pacific power and that “going home is not an option”. Indeed, Bannon combines his right-wing populism with the anti-Chinese interventionist perspective, casting China in the role as the enemy of the American working people. Clearly, “America First” or “American nationalism” doesn´t mean what some people think it means – splendid national isolation in the City on the Hill. No, it means challenging the Chinese in “their” geopolitical space in the Pacific region, and even on the Chinese mainland itself. And while the challenge is mostly economical, Bannon doesn´t seem to rule out some kind of military action, although not in Hong Kong or the PRC proper, but certainly in the South China Sea.  

In the interview, Bannon argues that China wants to become the new hegemonic world power by combining two quite different geopolitical orientations: the Eurasian-based strategy associated with Mackinder and the sea-power strategy associated with Mahan. This is unique in great power history. He expresses strong disapproval of the Italian populist government for their pro-Chinese orientation. Is this why Salvini & Co didn´t want to have Bannon over in Italy? Bannon further mentions how China is de facto treating the South China Sea as their own territorial waters, while creating a global network of naval bases. However, Bannon believes that Chinese hegemonic ambitions have one fatal weakness: they are really based on Western, principally American, money! This reminds me of Anthony Sutton´s analysis of Stalin´s Soviet Union, according to which the Stalin regime became strong only thanks to massive American and Western aid. The United States elites are doing the same thing all over again, essentially building up an expansionist Communist power. They are doing it at the expense of the American people and the workers, essentially de-industrializing the US in the process, making millions of Americans unemployed, creating the opiate crisis, etc. Meanwhile, pundits claim that China´s upward trajectory can´t be stopped (Bannon mockingly calls this “the second law of thermodynamics”), while the U.S. is supposedly a declining power. Like Reagan took on the Soviets, Bannon believes that Trump can take on the Chinese, proving who is really global boss.

Bannon´s solution is two-fold: support for Trump against the “party of Davos” (the pro-Chinese Western globalists) and increased pressure on the Communist regime in Beijing. One action proposed is to send home all or most of the Chinese foreign students in the U.S., many of whom work in American laboratories, including sensitive weapons laboratories. Bannon regards them as a national security threat. He also wants to close down the so-called Confucius Institutes, claiming they are directly financed by the Chinese military (the PLA). In the more recent clip, Bannon proposes to simply stop American investments in China and bring the money home, while hindering Huawei and other Chinese businesses to penetrate the West. In this way, the Communist government of the PRC will simply collapse, Soviet style, and American hegemony be reasserted. While Trump isn´t ready to go quite as far yet, he *has* recently tweeted threats to the same effect, which may explain why Steve “Darth Vader” Bannon decided to enter the fray just now. What will happen if or when the PLA attacks Hong Kong is, shall we say, an interesting question!

Three other reflections. First, it´s interesting to note that Bannon sees China rather than Russia as the main enemy. The usual line in DC is that Russia is enemy number one, while various adventurist think tanks want the West to take on both the PRC and Russia at once (while also bombing the shit out of the Muslims). Second, the South China Sea shows the problems with the strategy of balancing the great powers – my favored “strategy” (see my review of Huntington´s book “The Clash of Civilizations”). Since the South China Sea is vital for international trade, it´s difficult to see how it can ever become part of an internationally recognized Sinosphere. But that, of course, means that “balance” is impossible. Third, note the implicitly Bonapartist idea of President Trump ordering U.S. private businesses to stop investing in China, an authority Bannon believes the president actually has. An imperial-populist presidency attacking powerful private corporations? I suppose we live in interesting times…