Once upon a time the United States of America was confident that it, shielded by broad oceans to the East and West and having friendly countries that it dominated economically and militarily to the North and South, was safe from any threat by any foreign nation or even any combination of nations. Washington was confident that it could defeat any adversary in conventional warfare and, if push came to shove, its nuclear weapon capability gave it a unique and decisive edge that no enemy would dare to challenge given the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That Golden Age, consisting of a few years after World War 2, did not last long however, as policymakers in Washington discerned that the Soviet Union, once an ally against Hitler, posed a great transnational threat due to its government embrace of the political doctrine of “communism.” “Communism” was the political poison that threatened to challenge and bring down the free-market capitalism that ruled unchallenged in the United States and as such it was an emergent and growing national security threat, with communist parties increasingly implanted and growing all across Europe as well as in parts of Asia and Latin America. Underlining the possibly lethal implications that came along with that threat, the Soviets even managed to end America’s nuclear near monopoly through the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage operation that revealed inter alia to Moscow the highly classified secrets of nuclear weaponry.
Americans suddenly did not seem quite so safe. The threat that southeast Asia was about to succumb to the communist juggernaut led to the Korean War, even though neither the political alignment of Korea nor its military capabilities posed any plausible threat to the United States. The fear of communism persisted for many years after the Korean War ended in an armistice, which still is in place, leading eventually to the Vietnam War, where the North Vietnamese supported by Communist China and Russia, appeared to threaten American allies in the region. In spite of that, it needed a fake Gulf of Tonkin incident to pull the United States into the conflict, which killed 53,000 Americans and nearly 2 million Vietnamese.
But both during and after Vietnam, the threat perception shifted geographically with more emphasis on what was going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, admittedly a lot closer to “home.” The CIA was active in subverting leftist regimes as they rose up in the region, most notably including the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973 Chile leading to his replacement by friendly-to-Washington General Augusto Pinochet.
The United States also continued to be active in its defense against the Soviets in Europe, working through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which in theory created a bulwark against communist expansion. The United States was the lynchpin of the alliance, providing many of the soldiers and most of the money. By the time when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, American taxpayers supported a military budget that was larger than those of most of the world’s leading nations, economically and politically speaking, combined. It was regarded as the sole superpower. Then came 9/11 and national security again was featured under George W Bush, who dubbed himself the “new sheriff in town” and divided the world up into those who were “with” the United States and those who were “not.”
The “defense” budget grew in response to that threat perception, in support of an activist interventionist foreign policy. It was repeatedly asserted that America’s national security was threatened by a large part of the world, or at least that is how it was portrayed as the US military opened up hundreds of new bases. This perception prevailed in a most heavy-handed fashion when it came to dealings with countries like Syria, Iraq and more recently Iran, none of which actually threatened the United States in any way. And the “fear” promotion reflected in the national media was reinforced by the vast and growing political influence of America’s powerful Israel Lobby, which successfully borrowed and manipulated fraudulent security concerns promoted by the Jewish State to corrupt Congress and the White House and turn Israeli interests into US national “defense imperatives.
All of which leads to the understanding on the part of the American government that “national security” is the game to play when in doubt and something is needed to make the public feel that it is being protected, particularly when it is not in any danger or under threat at all. In the recent Gubernatorial contest in Virginia, the woman who won, a former CIA officer, felt it expedient to boast that she had “kept us safe.” Exploiting fear is also a tool that can be produced as needed to support policies that involve no international threat whatsoever. We have today, for example, a government that spies on and interferes with ordinary citizens more than ever has been true in our history and it is all described as being done to keep us safe and secure. But even given the understanding that most governments can and will behave badly, the sheer manipulation of fear by President Donald J Trump has gone far beyond the way the game was rigged for “security” by his predecessors, all of whom have been all too often acting on behalf of domestic lobbies like the Israelis and defense contractors.
Note in particular how Trump during his first term in 2018 actually claimed “security from an international threat” when he was doing something that made the United States and the Middle East region less secure. That was when he tore up Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which had committed Iran to regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to make sure that it was not developing a nuclear weapon. Trump characteristically played the national security card in doing what Israel had presumably ordered him to do, claiming that the Iranians were cheating and were developing their own nukes secretly at facilities that would be hidden from the inspectors. Inevitably, he provided no evidence that that was the case and the United States intelligence community subsequently confirmed that reliable information had demonstrated that Iran had given up all nuclear development that might lead to a weapon in 2003. In other words, Trump was lying and was doing Israel’s bidding over an issue where the actual US interests were quite different and he covered his actions by claiming that there was a “threat.”
Since the war initiated by Israel and the United States against an unthreatening Iran began in February 2026 Trump’s public utterances about the relationship with the Persians have invariably cited his stated belief that he had stopped the Iranians from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which would have threatened the United States. That was, of course, a lie. And to compound his infamous abuse of the facts, he has gone so far as threaten to destroy completely Iran on at least seven occasions, calling for the country to be “obliterated” and/or “annihilated,” most recently during his address to the United Nations last week. Conjuring up ninety-million dead Persians as a talking point suggests that Trump is even more bloodthirsty than his good friend and “genocider” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
And Trump seemingly never knows when to stop. Witness how he has threatened NATO members because they have not responded to the “threat” to American security posed by Iran. And then there is the moronic Trumpean characteristic series of vile monologues complaining about long-time allies Canada and Greenland, invariably focused on the threat to US security that he claims they represent. They should consider themselves lucky that they have been treated so gently! When it comes to the threat posed by “communist” Cuba the president only had this to say last week “I think I’ll have the honor of conquering Cuba. That wouldn’t be bad. It would be a great honor. I can liberate it or conquer it, I think I can do what I want with it.”
Trump has also played the “national security” game with two of his major follies in Washington DC as he seeks to turn the city into “Trumpland.” The first is his gilded ballroom for which he destroyed the East Wing of the White House. When the project grew in grandeur and the Trumpster discovered he could not pay for it, he fortified the basement and declared the modifications to be recommended by the military and secret service, necessary for security. Inevitably, the whole thing was a trick to get the Pentagon budget to cover whatever is needed to finish the job and allow Ballroom Trump to see the light of day. Likewise with the disgusting Arch of Triumph, or perhaps one should say Arch of Trump because that is what it really is. As the estimated costs of the folly, which will block views of the Arlington National Cemetery and also of the Lincoln Memorial, escalated a security feature was added. There will now be sniper nests on top of the edifice and presumably also concealed inside with openings under the roof to fire from. There will be as well an ammunition storehouse so no one runs out of ammo as well as a storage place for drones which can be used to take out bigger targets.
Presumably Trump will be able to order “open fire!” on presumed illegal alien tourists gathered near the existing Washington monuments and he will also call for the launching of drones against the not-so-distant White House and/or Capitol and Congressional buildings if the Democrats should take them over after what he will claim to be election fraud. But don’t worry about that! There will surely be a good and prevailing national security reason that can be invoked in 2028 to lock the Democrats up and give us Donald Trump for an additional four years!
Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.
