My Take | Loose cannon Bannon is no George Kennan
- One was the architect of America’s containment policy against the Soviets, the other is ‘President Trump’s FORMER and discredited adviser’
History repeats itself, Marx wrote, first as tragedy, then as farce. I am reminded of this famous saying with all the endless claims of the trade war between China and the United States as a new cold war.
More specifically, it was this paper’s recent interview with Steve Bannon, one-time chief strategist of US President Donald Trump.
The trade war is no cold war and Bannon is not George Kennan, the architect of America’s containment policy against the Soviets.
Despite attempts by American pundits to make it into a historic confrontation, it’s looking like a bad joke on a reality TV show of Trump’s that somehow manages to get good ratings and has been renewed for another season.
When Kennan wrote his 1947 classic analysis, “The sources of Soviet conduct”, in Foreign Affairs, he was prophesising a momentous struggle.
“The Russians look forward to a duel of infinite duration,” he wrote. “The United States cannot expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet regime.