The trouble with Trump and national security … Trump is consistent only in his inconsistency on national security issues … There are the growing challenges abroad — the rising threat of ISIS, the resurgence of al Qaeda, the menace of Putinism and a newly aggressive China, all of which should mean the party historically most trusted on national security would make the crumbling world a special feature of its electoral appeal.  But no. Here’s the trouble: Donald Trump not only knows nothing about national security, he doesn’t care to know. –CNN

This is a strong and damning article by Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

The Institute is known as a conservative – though “compassionate” – think tank. But from what we can tell the gulf is wide and deep between modest  libertarian entities like DB and looming “conservative” facilities like AEI.

As an anarcho-libertarian publication, DB takes the stance that government is basically the problem, not the solution.

Any time you’re telling people what to do, you are essentially “fixing a price” – transferring resources from one place to another by force.

This is inevitably an economic distortion that invades and invalidates free-market operations.

When you invalidate free-markets, you reduce or eliminate competition. When that happens, economic functions are disturbed and demeaned. Worst case, you end up with places like Venezuela where inflation is now approaching 1,000 percent.

Political solutions never work as planned and marketplace environments inevitably produce better results.

Those who work in government know this, of course. That is why they are constantly trying to manufacture domestic and international tensions and worse.

It is only in times of war and impending war – or perhaps economic emergencies – that government can really be justified.

The West supposedly won two world wars against fascist opponents but now it turns out that tomorrows model of governance involves, nonetheless, a kind of global fascism (see Hillary article, this issue.)

Generally wars of self-defense may be seen as justifiable but wars of aggression are not. It gets really hard to tell, however, as governments will claim that any war is a “defensive” one.

The sociopolitical environment surrounding and nurturing warfare is similarly filled with misleading rhetoric.

This article is a good example of that.

More:

It has been said many times that the measure of a leader is not in his embrace of the specifics, but his vision for the nation’s role in the world. For Republicans, that means that wonks like Richard Nixon and anti-nerds like George W. Bush have shared a sense of their country’s place in history.

The article goes on like this, damning Trump for not exhibiting the traits of a wise leader. As you can see, above, the implication somehow is that both Nixon and “W” were wiser than Trump appears to be.

The author also points out that “for many of us who would indeed like to make America great again,” greatness will not be found in the GOP, at least not Trump’s GOP.

She does point out that the GOP has a lot to be “proud of,” including ending slavery and the end of the Cold War.

But, wait. Lincoln neither started nor prosecuted the Civil War in order to free the slaves. In fact, he made many public suggestions that the best place for people of African descent was back in Africa.

As for the Cold War, books like The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, show us clearly that Wall Street supported and funded the Russian Revolution.

In other words, the rise of the USSR and the subsequent Cold War were part of cold-blooded Hegelian dialectic intended to further the current growing, globalist environment.

Seen from this perspective, the idea that the GOP ought to be “proud” of ending the Cold War is a nonsensical jumble of words.

The GOP cannot be proud of anything. It is just a label. But people in the GOP certainly cannot be proud of its actions either as regards slavery or the Cold War because historical representations in this regard are simply inaccurate.

Pletka ends by saying that the GOP convention will simply be a reminder that the candidate, a “TV host” is appealing to most of his supporters for his “brash and unapologetic ignorance and the irrefutable fact that he is not Hillary Clinton.”

OK, maybe so, but let us argue that for all his faults, Trump is preferable to someone who is “skilled” and “informed” regarding national security and foreign policy.

As we’ve tried to point out, such “experts” are constantly engaged in creating tensions and the international problems that they are then needed to solve.

Often such “experts” actually collude with the other side to create crises that are in need of endless diplomatic tending.

Most modern “international crises” like environmentalism, global warming or various sorts of resource scarcity are made-up to justify the power of the state.

Worst case, “experts” create military confrontations including full-blown shooting wars that spiral out of control and end up costing millions of civilian and military lives.

Conclusion: Trump seems to have some level of contempt for the “art of diplomacy” as it is practiced today. And apparently, he is ignorant about the finer points of national security. From our point of view, these traits can be seen as recommendations not condemnations.