H R McMaster, Jim Mattis and John Kelly alongside Donald Trump in October 2017. Photo by Andrew Harrer via PA Images.
How many Americans, waking in a cold sweat in the dead of night, worried that their president is about to attack North Korea or Mexico or Stormy Daniels – or all of them simultaneously – have been able to calm themselves and return to sleep with the gentle words of their spouse whispering in their ear: “Don’t fret honey: General Mattis is there. General McMaster is there. General Kelly…”
Well, it’s time to sit bolt upright and sleep no more. Retired General Kelly might not be long for his post of White House Chief of Staff. Retired Marine General James Mattis might also be looking for a way out of the top job at the Pentagon. And rumours abound about the fractured relationship between Trump and Lt Gen H R McMaster (who is still in uniform) and whose job as National Security Adviser could not be more pivotal in these dangerous times. Asked about his future in the last few days the General would only say: “Everybody has got to leave the White House at some point.”
Trump, we are told, is wanting to seize the control that he thinks he has lost. Mike Pompeo’s installation at the State Department is part of it, but there is more to come. Although rumours of a weekend mass sacking came to nothing, the military men (and a few others) seem to be working out their notice.
It would be a big change…
…but it might also be a good thing.
One of the great ironies of the Trump presidency has been the welcoming of former apolitical soldiers into the very heart of his ‘drain the swamp’ White House of outsiders. The Trump presidency has been bolstered in key areas and in moments of crisis by agents of what one might term non-partisan continuity.
And, to continue the irony, many liberal anti-Trumpers are, of course, just delighted that weighty generals and ex-Generals are there. They would view with much apprehension the idea that Trump might be freed from the dead-eyed oversight of the wearers of brass. The Generals are saving the Republic from the president – and possibly the world, too. They must stay at all costs – running things from behind the scenes with their fingers covering every possible trigger. Their fingers – not his.
Eliot Cohen, the director of the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, former State Department advisor and member of UnHerd’s History Jury – has coined a term that seeks to humanise this takeover. He calls the rule of the Generals “a benign Junta”. Evan McMullin, the former CIA man who ran for the presidency as an independent in an effort to derail Trump, told me that the part of the appeal of these men is their dislike of politics and politicians.
When John Brennan, the former CIA boss, Tweets that Trump will one day be regarded as “a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history”, he is regarded by many as properly nonpartisan. Telling it like it is. Saying what must be said.
The suggestion is that this is a temporary disaster-aversion programme. The Generals and retired men of action are doing what good soldiers always do: putting their lives on the line for their country. Eventually there will be medals and a ticker-tape parade and a grateful world will move on into a post-Trump future.
But there is an alternative way of looking at this ‘junta’. That would suggest the departure of Kelly et al – while unsettling in the short term – should be welcomed for the longer-term. It’s a view hinted at by the former Bush speechwriter and Republican intellectual David Frum in Trumpocracy (his broadside blasting of the Trump White House and the Trump modus operandi). Frum has no trouble with the Generals in this White House. He follows entirely the anti-Trumpers’ view that Kelly et al are public servants doing a horrid job. Frum points out that some American liberals are also receiving an education in who the friends of the Republic really are. How very suddenly the FBI has replaced Edward Snowden as a pin-up in the salons of San Francisco.
But Frum worries about the future. What if the Democratic Party decides to go down the Trump road and selects a candidate in 2020 that the military folk think is unserious, or unstable, or downright dangerous? What if they don’t like the look of Oprah? What if they think she’s weak or unstable or ignorant? In the longer-term, does the ‘saving of the Republic’ in a time of Trump open the door for future involvement and intervention that subverts democracy long after Trump is gone?
One of the problems here is that lunatic conspiracy theorists have made discussion of these matters decidedly tricky. There is a whole world of online madness among those who think Trump is being done in by the deep state. My personal favourite is a suggestion that NASA and the mainstream media, in cahoots with the intelligence agencies, are about to stage a fake alien invasion in order to get a tighter grip on power. David Frum has dismissed these characters with customary elan: “Once you realize that ‘deep state’ is code for ‘the rule of law’, you can translate their jibberish into something more like English.”
But as Frum himself points out, there have been times in recent American history when the intelligence agencies, the military, the powers-that-be in the shady parts of the American authority superstructure, have been too much in charge. They were reined in during the 1970s but as Frum remarks in his book, “Trump has given them powerful and righteous motives to emancipate themselves.”
And go back to how they were. Routinely spying on and second guessing the democratically elected leaders of the nation. Folks such as J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who famously kept tabs on a wide range of Americans he didn’t approve of, including his boss the Attorney General. The Joint Chiefs of Staff who kept an eye on Nixon in the “The Moorer-Radford affair“, named after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, and the stenographer, Navy Yeoman Charles Radford, who stole documents on behalf of his military boss.
Stories of penetration and subterfuge involving multiple government agencies pepper the histories of 1960s Washington DC. When the film “Seven Days in May” – starring Kurt Douglas and Ava Gardner – hit cinemas in 1964, the tale of an arms treaty with the Soviet Union being subverted by the military did not seem to many Americans to be that far-fetched. There was a deep state.
So, yes, there will be handwringing if and when Kelly and Mattis and McMaster bite the dust in the coming days but there will be some relief too. As the conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin put it in an article last year when General Kelly attacked a member of Congress and refused to be questioned about it, “Congress needs to stomp out creeping military authoritarianism. Congress should start by barring generals from acting in civilian capacities in the White House.”
Congress will do no such thing any time soon. But when the predictable howls of outrage follow the departure of the military ‘adults in the room’, it’s worth remembering that the room – the Oval office – is meant to be in civilian democratic control.
That civilian is Donald J Trump – and whoever is chosen in the future to replace him. Sometimes that might feel ghastly but, as plenty of thinking Americans will tell you, the alternative is worse.
Justin Webb presents the Americast podcast and Today on Radio Four. His Panorama documentary “Trump the Sequel”, is available now on Iplayer
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SubscribeThis was a fascinating interview. I agree with some other commenters who noted that Mr. Fazi is sometimes not the most articulate speaker, nonetheless he raised some interesting issues.
If this winter is as bad as many predict regarding energy prices and availability, and if people do not protest strongly and consistently, then next year Europeans will have entered a very different world. Governments, major corporations, and the talking heads at organizations such as WTO, will have learned how far they can push people and get away with it. All they have to do the following winter is improve conditions slightly and people will think progress is being made. But the world will never be the same. Standards of living will never return to those that existed pre-pandemic; not because the resources aren’t there, but because people will not demand their fair share of the resources.
Freddie suggested that there might be a significant number of people who prefer authoritarian governance because it provides a sense of security and relieves them of the burden of looking after themselves. I suspect there’s much truth in that viewpoint. The world has become ever more complex in the past twenty years, and the average person faces a much greater challenge making a decent living. I suspect some/many are tired of the struggle and will relinquish much personal agency in return for what amounts to a guaranteed minimum income provided by the government.
I was sad to see Freddie stop Mr. Fazi when he advocated (or at least acknowledged as a possibility) civil unrest in response to shortages. I suspect Freddie was concerned that type of talk might get this episode, or perhaps Unherd itself, cancelled by youtube. He was probably right to be concerned. What a sad situation that is. I view civil unrest, including rioting, as a last resort, but there are extreme circumstances when ordinary people must take a very strong stand against an oppressive or harmfully incompetent government. I don’t know if we’ve reached that point but no one should be afraid to discuss all options at this difficult time. As an aside, I don’t remember the folks cheering on the BLM riots in 2020 worrying about being cancelled.
Great interview, Unherd. I do agree that the elites of this world endlessly expect the ordinary person to make sacrifices they are not prepared to make themselves. Let’s hope society collectively shows some backbone soon or else perhaps we deserve to become Eloi cultivated and preyed on by a bunch of Morlocks.
I did give up on the discussion towards the end because the sum of the discussion was do you want to be run by govt/big business or do you want to be run by big govt? Big govt of course being entirely in the interests of the citizens! Yawn, Fazi comes across really a bit like an earnest teenager to me.
Another socialist wanting to spend other peoples money!
While the corporations have behaved extremely poorly during the Covid scamdemic, they were in fact encouraged to do so by governments.
They worked in tandem to control us with the bluntest tools possible.
I trust neither.
Most corporations should be broken into smaller concerns. The stock market should return to it’s original purpose. Banks should just be bankers. I could go on but I think those able to think – get my drift.
And Italy is ruined by the communists and socialists, such as this man.
Exactly what we need is a coherent non socialist alternative. All this give more power to governments, because governments are managing things badly nonsense turns me off. Having said that I do think he represents a lot of people’s views. Big farmer etc are evil, which is all very convenient for halfwit political leaders.
This guy is not qualified for this talk. The section beginning 34:36 of will it all break down this winter he is spouting the most appalling ‘Modern Monetary Theory’ (MMT) where Central Bank Borrowing is just borrowing from its self, and causes no harm OR inflation in the short term. He says all money is just ones and zeros… he is utterly ignorant of finance. Dangerously ignorant. The point seems to be if there are shortages just force the Government to give everyone more stuff and energy.
Can’t afford everything? Protest till they give you everything for free. This is two year old child thinking.
Freddy jumps in to ask if what he means is every country should produce their own goods, energy, food and so on????? How? I mean, come on, is this really anything but aimless chatter? If this was so why do the Bangladeshi’s not just make all the food, energy, and stuff they want? I mean come on Guys.
The British Central bank cannot make the Congo mine copper, China to smelter and form it into useful metal, and foreign factory workers make the products so the angry British can get it all free.
This is crazy and Unherd Needs Harnwell – based in Rome he can speak on any topic – and worth listening to. Ben “MAGAlomaniac” Harnwell on Getter for interesting mad chatter, from someone who actually knows all the European Politics, and finance, war, and the rest.
UnHerd lost a great deal of credibility airing such nonsense. The guy hasn’t a clue what he is talking about – just rabble rising.
This guy is bonkers – he is agitating for large scale breaking the law. This cannot be supported in any circumstances in any democratic country. I won’t even begin to pick apart his analysis or the nudge-nudge conspiracy stuff he came out with – suffice to say it is top to bottom garbage, and dangerous garbage at that. This is clearly someone who has never actually attempted to run a business of any sort – people who have learn a large number of bitter truths, which are a great cure for this type of delusional nonsense.
What rapacious globalist corporation paid you to libel this person so stupidly and virulently ?
It was the Davos Elite. And the Bill Gates. Oh, and the Wuhan lab. And not forgetting the mile high club. And …
No, Just their money!
Well the money’s nice y’know. But I do it because I want the world to eat bugs and live in a pod.
As long as you charge an exorbitant rent for the pod, and filet mignon prices for the bugs,because, you can never have enough money!
Nice try: but it’s a ‘fail’ I’m afraid!
Probably no one. And where precisely is the “libel” you allege ? That is a defined legal term and you should be very certain before making such allegations lest Prashant takes action against you for defamation. I think you are more at risk than he is here …
I listened to as much of the interview as I could stomach (17 minutes) and have to agree with Prashant that Fazi seems to be a complete fantasist whose claims have little if any grounding in reality. Quite apart from the fact that he’s hopelessly inarticulate and a poor choice for an interview on that basis alone.
He also not only condones but encourages civil unrest and rioting.
As Prashant says, not a serious commentator. I know we need a variety of views on UnHerd, but can’t they find someone remotely professional and credible to argue this case ?
For clarity: these are my own views and no one paid me to write them. Before you ask.
”What rapacious globalist corporation paid you to libel this person so”
Because the talk above needed it, I have never heard as pointless, and wrong, and just talking without any reasoning, in a video.
Aren’t memories short? Poll tax riots? ‘don’t remember those.. miners’ strike? Nope: ‘dont remember that either.. when ordinary decent people are kicked enough they look to other possible solutions. Politics? No, that’s no good. Welfare? oops: ‘been dismantled. But there’s always the food bank right? No: it seems they’re running out of food!! But you reckon, in a democracy, civil unrest is unthinkable? For sure, one of you is delusional but I think it might be you!
Comment deleted, in case it is misinterpreted..