Episode #170 – Brent Johnson and the TINA Effect of the US Dollar

Hi Tom,

Regarding your comment that “the original architects of US foreign policy are deceased and all that are left are mediocrities”. With that in mind, and the recent Tucker interview of Mike Benz, I went back and started looking at some of the old documents from the Kennan Era:

Report by the Policy Planning Staff – Top Secret – Washington , February 24, 1948.

1] No dilettantes:

“No policy can become really effective unless it commands the understanding of those who carry it out. The understanding of governmental policies in the field of foreign affairs cannot be readily acquired by people who are new to that field, even when they are animated by the best will in the world. This is not a matter of briefing, or instructing, which could be done in a short time. It is a matter of educating and training, for which years are required. “

2] Why are there so many military bases in Italy?

“The Staff has therefore felt that the wisest policy for us to follow would be to make it evident to the Russians by our actions that the further the communists go in Greece and Italy the more surely will this Government be forced to extend the deployment of its peacetime military establishment in the Mediterranean area.”

3] How did the French Colonial Franc slip through the era of decolonization? The US didn’t have the resources to rebuild everything:

“A second possible solution would lie in arrangements whereby a union of Western European nations would undertake jointly the economic development and exploitation of the colonial and dependent areas of the African Continent.”

5] Britain problematically between the EU and Trans-Atlanticists:

“If we were to take Britain into our own U.S.-Canadian orbits according to some formula of “Union Now” (The 5 Eyes originated here), this would probably solve Britain’s long term economic problem and create a natural political entity of great strength. But this would tend to cut Britain off from the close political association she is seeking with continental nations…”

5] The problem of open-ended NATO memberships:

“Failure on our part to satisfy -demands for further membership- would then be interpreted as lack of interest in the respective countries, and as evidence that we had “written them off” to the Russians. Beyond the Atlantic area, which is a clean-cut concept, and which embraces a real community of defense interest firmly rooted in geography and tradition, there is no logical stopping point in the development of a system of anti-Russian alliances until that system has circled the globe…”

6] Prediction of the Ukraine War:

“The danger of political conquest (color revolutions) is still greater than the military danger. If a war comes in the foreseeable future, it will probably be one which Moscow did not desire but did not know how to avoid.”

7] Palestine / Israel:

“The pressures to which this Government is now subjected are ones which impel us toward a position where we would shoulder major responsibility for the maintenance, and even the expansion, of a Jewish state in Palestine. To the extent that we move in this direction, we will be operating directly counter to our major security interests in that area.”

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v01p2/d4
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v03/d182
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d269

Those three papers from George Kennan in 1948 (75 years ago) outline the makings of the Perfect Storm we are currently facing. I thought some of your readers, and slack members, might find that interesting.

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Thanks & Keep Killing It!