President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Michael Anton to be the State Department’s director of policy and planning bodes well for the country’s foreign policy as we enter what could be some of the most dangerous years of the 21st century. Trump’s national security team will inherit from the Biden administration a world in turmoil — especially in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. The Eurasian landmass is aflame with wars and conflicts that some experts worry will develop into World War III unless wiser heads prevail. From 1945 to 1991, we avoided World War III and won Cold War I (against the Soviet Union) by generally following the outlines of a foreign policy formulated by the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in the late 1940s, then headed by George F. Kennan. We can avoid World War III and win Cold War II (against Communist China) if the Trump administration formulates and implements a foreign policy that, like Kennan’s, mixes toughness with prudence and patience. Michael Anton is famous in conservative circles for his 2016 essay in support of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy titled, “The Flight 93 Election,” wherein he urged conservatives and Republicans to charge forward like the brave passengers on that doomed airplane to save the country from the rot of progressivism. Anton noted that the deck was stacked against conservatives because of the Leftist bias of the educational, cultural, and media intelligentsia; the Right’s unwillingness to fight the Left on their own terms; and the “ceaseless importation” of immigrants that are “more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.” Of the many GOP candidates in 2016, Anton wrote, “Trump alone … has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.” Trump, he wrote, was “more prudent — more practically wise — than all of our wise-and-good who so bitterly oppose him.” It was a stirring call for an America First agenda at home and abroad. Interestingly, like Kennan’s “X” article in Foreign Affairs, Anton’s “Flight 93 Election” essay was written pseudonymously in the Claremont Review of Books. Anton served on the National Security Council in Trump’s first term. Of more relevance to Anton’s selection to head the Policy Planning Staff is an essay he wrote in the Winter 2022-2023 issue of the Claremont Review of Books titled “The Containment of George Kennan.” In that essay, Anton reviewed Frank Costigliola’s biography Kennan: A Life Between Worlds. Anton noted that in the early years of Cold War I, Secretary of State George Marshall established the Policy Planning Staff unit and named Kennan to head it. There, Anton wrote, Kennan and his staff “actually planned policy.” However, he noted that after Kennan’s brief tenure there (during which he recommended the policy of containment) and that of his successor Paul Nitze (the principal author of NSC-68, which recommended a more offensive version of containment), foreign policy planning was done elsewhere in the government. (RELATED: James Burnham: the Sage of Kent, Connecticut) Although Anton noted that Kennan was an elitist who thought that foreign policy was too complex to be subject to democratic whims, Kennan nevertheless held views about foreign policy that would align with Trump’s America First agenda. First, Anton noted that Kennan was a foreign policy realist who abhorred nation-building and crusades for democracy. He quoted Kennan: “The aptitude for democracy is not something just born into people … but has to attain the quality of habit.” Kennan, Anton wrote, “scoffed at the idea that Russia … would or could ever democratize,” and in his later years vigorously opposed George W. Bush’s efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East. Second, Anton noted that Kennan was one of the first foreign policy “wise men” to oppose NATO enlargement after the end of Cold War I. Kennan accurately predicted that NATO enlargement would lead to Russian nativism and imperialism. Third, and related to his opposition to NATO enlargement, Kennan understood Russia’s preoccupation with having a friendly government in Ukraine and, Anton believes, “would almost certainly oppose the Western aid that keeps [the Ukraine war] going.” Kennan, Anton wrote, would (like Trump) advocate negotiations to end the war. Fourth, Kennan the realist would pour cold water on the notion that the United States should carry on an ideological crusade against “autocracy.” Anton noted that Kennan opposed U.S. efforts to pressure European empires to decolonize and supported engagement with Spain’s autocrat Francisco Franco. Fifth, Kennan worried, Anton wrote, about the negative impact that mass immigration would have on America’s “political unity and cultural cohesion” — a unity and cohesion that would be necessary to effectively contain Communist China and eventually achieve victory in Cold War II by what Kennan would describe as the “break-up or the gradual mellowing” of Communist Chinese power. Anton characterized Kennan as a “Machiavellian,” which Anton defines as “clear-eyed and hard-headed about the cold realities of international relations and his country’s true, core interests.” Kennan, he wrote, had an “instinctual conservatism” which led him to share “more opinions with today’s populist Right than with the contemporary Left.” Michael Anton appears to be intellectually well-positioned to not only revive the importance of the Policy Planning Staff but also to steer it in a direction that will carry out Trump’s America First agenda. He could become the George Kennan of Cold War II. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: Approach Syria With a Tragic Mind We Live In the Age of Trump The National Endowment for Democracy Should be Defunded on Principle The post Michael Anton: Trump’s ‘George Kennan’ Pick for Cold War II appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.