Looking at the rapidly changing posture America is taking on the world stage, it occurs to me that all of this new strategic diplomacy would be consistent with the idea that the Claremont Institute’s Michael Anton, who is the State Department’s Director of Policy Planning in the new administration, has command of Trump’s ear and is operating as an open channel to Anton’s lately deceased fellow Claremonter, his mentor Angelo Codevilla, who was himself an avatar of John Quincy Adams and James Monroe. (I’ve been meaning to put up a detailed post about Codevilla’s excellent book America’s Rise And Fall Among Nations, which calls for a return to exactly the original guiding principles of American statesmanship, laid out by Washington, Monroe, and J.Q. Adams, that we see coming to the fore once again under Trump.)
In short, it is a policy that acknowledges the realities and actual distributions of power on the world stage, places concrete American interests over quixotic world-saving and hubristic ideological crusades, and understands that treaties and formal alliances are empty words that only persist as long as interests align. (See also this post from October, which I wrote just after having read Codevilla’s book.)
With all this in mind, I have to wonder whose idea it was to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”: the perfect Monrovian note (as well as being a delightful poke in the eye to the people who, over the past few years, have bullied us into renaming everything from mountains to military bases to sports teams to pancake syrup).
Mr. Anton? Am I close to the mark here? You’ve been keeping a wonderfully low profile so far — but I very much doubt that you’ve been idle.
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You may have seen my post on the naming and renaming of the Gulf of Mexico/America (here), but I will here again try to spread my objection to this misuse of the word “gulf.” The Gulf is far too large to be a called a gulf, a gulf properly being the outer entrance or approach to a harbor or bay. I know there is the ridiculously named Gulf of Guinea, but that should be called a bight and the Gulf of Mexico/America should be called a sea. If we are going to make new maps, let’s fix this outrage against geographic nomenclature. (The Gulf of Maine should also be called the Great Maine Bight. This would draw attention to the fact that the east coast of the United States is made of three great bights, separated by your own dear Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras.)
Didn’t Spain name the Gulf as a result of their colony building gold seeking enterprises a few centuries ago?
Perhaps Anton will have the sort of influence that George Kennan had, who was the first Policy Director under Truman and brought the concept of containment to the foreign affairs lexicon.
An additional impetus for this return to realpolitik is the financial collapse of the United States. Part of Trump’s managing the country’s bankruptcy is the retreat of the Empire to the Western hemisphere. Which fortunately happens to coincide with the Anton/Codevilla angle.