Starting ‘all-encompassing war’ with China topped Trump strategist Bannon’s White House agenda, new book reveals

An “all-encompassing” war with China was one of the earliest objectives of President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, according to Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a controversial, behind-the-scenes-account of the US leader’s first year in office.

“The real enemy, said an on-point Bannon, careful not to defend Trump too much or to diss him at all, was China,” author Michael Wolff wrote in an account of a strategy session two weeks ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

“China was the first front in a new cold war,” Wolff wrote, summarising Bannon’s message to former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes at the meeting.

“China is where Nazi Germany was in 1929 to 1930,” Wolff quoted Bannon as saying. “The Chinese, like the Germans, are the most rational people in the world, until they’re not. And they’re gonna flip like Germany in the ‘thirties. You’re going to have a hypernationalist state, and once that happens, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Although Bannon left his White House role in August, Washington is on the verge of a trade war with Beijing, a path that aligns with Wolff’s account of Bannon’s over-arching foreign policy goal: conflict with China. Trump ordered investigations into China’s trade and investment policies, moves which may result in punitive action against Chinese goods and investors.

While the US and China have not approached the kind of armed conflict that Germany catalysed in the 1930s, friction has been building on the trade and investment front.