Editorial: Political Influence On National Security

The National Security Council (NSC) is a central piece on the government’s national security and foreign affairs’ apparatus. That’s where the information at hand is analyzed in order to make the decisions that will lead to the deployment of soldiers, spies or diplomats.

It is not unusual for every new president to make small adjustments to the Council, but always maintaining the principle that it is no place for domestic political calculations; that it is a space for cold data and objective counseling so the president can take the decision the moment requires.

The restructuration ordered by President Donald Trump suggests this will not be the case anymore.

The designation of political strategist Steve Bannon as a regular Principals Committee member breaks with everything established previously. It puts the central figure of candidate Trump’s presidential campaign at a decision-making table that does not have anything to do with the President’s image or message.

The most worrisome thing is that this measure highlights Bannon’s powerful influence in this administration.

He was previously the head of Breitbart News, a website whose conspiracy theories and manipulation of information made it popular among neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He is also the promoter behind Trump’s nationalistic motto “America First.”

It was unusual From the start that his position of presidential counselor in the White House was at the same level of the Chief of Staff, who is usually number two in the internal organization.

A confrontational style and the disorganized stream of executive orders during Trump’s administration first week is attributed to Bannon’s growing power. From the war on the
media – it was Bannon who dubbed it as “the opposition” and told it to “keep its mouth shut” – to immigration policy have his fingerprints.

Now, on the pretext that Bannon was a naval officer in the 70s and 80s, he enters a NSC that is relegating to an inferior position the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence, which were previously on the Principals Committee.

It is scary that at the head of the National Security Council sits president Trump, an uninformed egotist who is easily manipulated by an authoritarian white nationalism ideologue. Bannon has already talked about a nationalist populist vision in Europe.