Ukraine and the entire world are trying to get an insight into the phenomenon of Stephen Bannon, who has become the chief strategist for the White House and whom US President Donald Trump has appointed permanent member of the National Security Council. Now no one other than him presides the meetings of the council, which is actually preparing the decisions which end up on the president’s desk.
Some six months ago no one knew of Bannon, who now is considered to be the world’s second most influential man. His biography is quite unordinary indeed. Bannon was born in 1953 into a working-class family. He holds two college degrees, bachelor of urban planning and master of national security. After college he served for seven years as a US Navy officer. Afterwards he earned a MBA from Harvard Business School. What followed was a variegated career in sectors ranging from investment banking to environmental protection to documentary film production and media business.
Some explain Bannon’s rapid rise by the fact that it is he, former owner of a conservative news outlet Breitbart News, is credited with Trump’s electoral victory. Brietbart News is known in the US as a mouthpiece of the so-called “alternative right” (Alt-Right) who hate all things liberal. According to the media, Bannon was the most successful in focusing Trump on the victorious message. While other advisors tried to change Trump, Bannon urged him to “hit the brakes,” that is, be himself. It turned out to be efficient.
He has become a kind of a commissary of the movement, a true adept of the alt-right doctrine, which strives to change history. “We are watching the birth of a new political order,” wrote Bannon in an e-mail to The Washington Post.
Global media vary in their commentary on Bannon’s phenomenal rise. For instance, Time dedicated an extended article to him headlined “The Great Manipulator.” Other media even compare him to Rasputin, for one reason or another. In particular, Salon writes in an article titled “Trump’s Rasputin seizes the moment: A week of chaos may suit Steve Bannon’s master plan”: “As Bannon said last summer, Trump is just a ‘blunt instrument’ and at this point it doesn’t matter if he ‘gets it’ or not. In his new role as Trump’s Rasputin, Bannon is now in a position to literally make his dreams of destruction come true.” However, Bannon likes to compare himself to Cromwell who advised the king and promoted transformations in England.
Moreover, he is said to describe himself to his fellow Republicans as “a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to ring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
Bannon’s colleagues nicknamed him Encyclopedia for the huge amount of information which he stores in his memory. Nevertheless, his more important feature is the similarity of his thinking to that of Trump. “They are both really great storytellers. The President and Steve have one important feature in common: perception of information and weighing the consequences,” explained the president’s advisor Kellyanne Conway in commentaries to mass media.
The Day has asked American and Ukrainian experts to explain Bannon’s phenomenon and tell how Kyiv should build relations with Washington, now that the White House’s chief strategist is the brain of the decision-making center in the US administration.
COMMENTARIES
Oleksandr TSVIETKOV, expert in American studies, professor, Diplomatic Academy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine:
“Bannon is a new, extraordinary figure in Washington D.C. At the moment, due to his proximity to President Trump, he is one of America’s most influential government officials. One could say that Bannon is his source of ideas and inspires Trump. That is why he was appointed Chief Strategist, while a seat on the National Security Council with the White House lets him develop ideas which eventually become part and parcel of the president’s orders. Bannon was the initiator of the Mexican wall and the ban on immigration from seven Islamic countries.
“Bannon is an erudite. He is a staunch supporter of Western civilization’s ideal foundations and loves to compare himself to Cromwell, who used his position of adviser to the king to lead England to Protestantism.
“He is a man of conceptual kind, who advocates his principles in three categories: social, national (“America first”), and that of Judeo-Christian values. Bannon’s civilizational approach boils down to the following: the US has lost entrepreneurial values and its workers. The upper class (the establishment) is stuck in bureaucracy and departs from the implementation of the business’ needs, whereas the lower class is stuck hopelessly where it is, and keeps impoverishing. In Bannon’s classification, the ‘neglected people’ are middle class Americans, who have lost their jobs.
“By the way, in the Oval Study Trump has hung the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, his ideal, while Bannon names Dick Cheney as his ideal. Such parallels speak volumes.
“Jackson entered the White House as a leader of a populist movement, and caused the change of the political system. In particular, he left the ranks of one political force and co-founded the Democratic Party. At the moment, such step was seen as a manifestation of displeasure with the contemporary establishment and the necessity to create a new moving force.
“As to Bannon’s ideal, Cheney was a guiding force for President G.W. Bush. Bannon hopes that his influence on the president will boost his chances to reach his goal and re-build the political apparatus.
“As Ukraine sets out to establish relations with the new US administration, it needs to take into account Bannon’s philosophy, weight, and of course search for opportunities to create ideological partnership. We need to proceed from the understanding of sharable values, which in principle happen to be the values we advocate. We call them ‘common European,’ but they are in fact universal human values.
“We can play on the field of civilizational and spiritual values, propose ideas, and approach concrete issues. We need to find our niche in America’s interests, where there are two important Russia-related moments: the war on Islamic Caliphate and the reduction of the nuclear arsenal.
“The recent confrontation caused by Trump passing certain decrees, in particular an entry ban for seven Islamic countries, comes about because neither Trump nor Bannon has any experience of political activity or civil service. The former approaches these issues as a businessman and a person familiar with propagandist activity, the latter, as a publicist and propagandist. At present the US may lack a force at the National Security Council meetings that would bring the president’s orders in accordance with legal practice.
“The new team are consequently fulfilling their electoral promises and trying to create a new class which would take care of the continuity of traditional American values. This position deserves some respect, although in its realization it will occasionally backfire and create problems. But the American machine will settle them right.”
Aubrey JEWETT, professor of the Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida:
“Stephen Bannon has plenty of influence with President Trump. Bannon helped get Trump into the White House by running the campaign and Trump has rewarded Bannon for his loyalty and success. I think the comparisons to Rasputin are probably overblown, but there is no doubt that Bannon has the ear of President Trump. Bannon is sometimes tied to, and may represent, the views of the Alternative Right (or Alt-Right as it is sometimes called) which is a broad loosely connected movement of people that think more radical conservative action is needed on a number of issues including illegal immigration and the fight against Islamic terrorism. They are called the Alt-Right because they frequently think that establishment conservatives mostly talk about conservative policy but don’t follow through on conservative policies. Some in the Alt-Right are quite nationalistic or even openly racist. Bannon had influence on the recent immigration order issued by Trump (although so did Trump’s friend and former NY Mayor Rudolph Guiliani who gave a number of interviews about his role in drafting the measure). On the other hand, President Trump has a number of other advisers and they also can sway his opinion on policy matters. For instance Vice President Mike Pence represents a mainstream establishment conservative Republican view and he seems to have regular access to the President and will likely be Trump’s most important advisor in terms of legislation and legislative strategy working with Congress. And perhaps Trump’s most trusted advisers seem to be his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner who are socially liberal and have pushed President Trump to protect gay rights (LGBT rights) and working women. So, while Bannon certainly has influence, he is no Rasputin since President Trump seems to be seeking counsel from a number of people and a number of views.”
Lincoln MITCHELL, political scientist, former professor of the Columbia University, author of the book The Democracy Promotion Paradox:
“It is apparent that during the first weeks of the Trump administration, Steve Bannon has emerged as the most powerful advisor in the White House. Bannon wrote Trump’s bizarre and apocalyptic inauguration address, has pushed through the strategy of leading with several highly impactful executive orders and has made sure that the administration has stayed on the far right. He now, despite almost no foreign policy experience or training, sits on the National Security Council as well. It should be noted that Bannon has no experience in government, so this has contributed to the difficulty the administration has had figuring out how government works. We have also seen Bannon’s hand in some of the nastier things Trump has done, such as not mentioning Jews when making a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day. While Bannon is extremely powerful now, given Trump’s management style, it is unlikely that he will remain this powerful for the next four years. Any analysis of the role of Bannon should stress that he is a representative of the fringe far right of American politics. Until recently even conservative Republicans would shy away from him. He has a world view that is fundamentally rooted in the notion that America should be a country of white Christians first and above everybody else. He is a small-minded bigot who, for some reason, is angry at the world and focuses that anger on Muslims, Jews, African Americans, immigrants, LGBT people, and anybody else who does not fit his idea of what America should be. The idea that Steve Bannon would be invited to a cocktail reception at the White House would be chilling to many Americans. The reality that he holds a powerful position in the White House tells just how perilous the state of the republic is.”
