These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.
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A year ago, after Trump had managed to get the prize, I wasn’t as fussed as some. I was well aware he was likely to wreck things domestically but my hope was that, while swinging his wrecker’s ball at his domestic enemies, he would manage to take out both NATO and AUKUS. This week, the White House issued their latest National Security Strategy (NSS), a 29 page document that sets out in broadest terms what it sees as the national goals and how the US should go about shaping the world to advance its ends. After reading it, it seems I may yet get my wish. The last NSS was from Biden’s office in 2022, of 43 pages, and there was one in 2017 (57 pages), from Trump 1.0. This sort of document is so broad and general that you may wonder why they bother but it’s seen as important in the bureaucracy so a large committee spends a lot of time fashioning it.
They start with a letter from the president. This year’s is brief and tells everybody how the US has made “extraordinary strides” in stopping eight wars and bringing peace and prosperity to the world. Starting on p1, it sets out the Strategy’s prime objective, the protection of core national interests, which it says previous administrations hadn’t done. They “badly miscalculated” a number of goals and abilities, such as thinking that “that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country” (p1). Thus, the US tried to do too much and was led astray, e.g. by “hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called ‘free trade’ that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend.” Other countries took advantage of US generosity and failed to look after themselves or helped themselves to US industrial and educational resources without offering anything in return. Worse, some countries “sucked” the US into wars or into international institutions that had nothing to do with core US interests. World domination was a “fundamentally undesirable and impossible goal” but Trump would fix that by focusing on more restricted targets.
Page 3 asks: “What should the US want?” followed by a list of “wants,” all phrased in superlatives: to be the most powerful, strongest, richest, most advanced, dynamic, productive, inventive respectful generous spiritual cultural and revered country with lots of healthy children in strong traditional families (truly; btm p4). Page 5 asks: “What do we want In and From the world?” First, a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine (from 1823) that will keep foreign influences out of the Western Hemisphere so American business can thrive, and the US military can straighten up errant governments and crush drug cartels. Internationally, the plan is to foil bad countries in order to avoid “forever wars,” to keep nasty people like drug dealing immigrants away and to stop Europe sliding into decadence. Domestically, all this will be achieved by tax cuts and getting rid of DEI and regulations and bringing back industries in order to maintain “military dominance for future generations.”
How will this be achieved? Starting on p 8 is a long list of moves that “The President of Peace” (with capitals) considers necessary, including Peace Through Strength, i.e. massive military forces; reforming international organisations so they advance rather than retard US interests; making sure no other country becomes dominant; eliminating trade imbalances; reviving the industrial base; mining coal and oil and rejecting “disastrous climate change,” etc. To this end, they propose reducing their foreign military presence to focus on the Americas, even to “the use of lethal force” to get their way. Asia gets a lot of space, meaning China and how to contain it and stop their predatory trade practices, drug exports, industrial espionage, IP theft and all the terrible things Chinese do to weaken the US. This will involve military alliances, trade treaties and lots more but there will be changes: “We have made clear to our allies that America’s current account deficit is unsustainable.”
Europe, of course, is a problem because they have coasted along on Uncle Sam’s coat tails for years and have declined, financially, militarily, morally and, crucially, racially, but that is all about to change. The US wants to be free of the burden of Ukraine and Europe will have to take this over as NATO cannot expand indefinitely. The US will “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” (i.e. favour certain political parties) so that Europe can “stand on its own feet” as well as opening European markets to American goods and services by eliminating their “hostile economic practices.”
The Middle East has long been a source of conflict and instability but now that the US is a major energy exporter, their interest will decline. Since Iran was defanged earlier this year and Pres. Trump united the Arab world “in pursuit of peace and normalization,” Israel’s position is secure so the Middle East is “emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment,” all of which will shape US involvement. Africa gets a mention on the last page as a likely place to do business with “capable, reliable states committed to opening their markets to U.S. goods and services.” And that’s it. Trump didn’t write this thing and there are no pictures in it so we know he didn’t read it.
The Biden NSS from 2022 was longer and woolier, classic boilerplate from an entirely colourless man who spent most of his life in politics without achieving anything noteworthy. He didn’t write it, of course, he probably didn’t write the 2 page letter that opened it but it was full of high-minded aspirations that have nothing to do with the reality of his term in office.
Trump’s version from 2017 is much longer, clearly written by a committee of diplomats, and gets right into it from page 1: “This National Security Strategy puts America first.” It was strong on the Constitution, the institutions of democracy, of protecting rights and dignity through respect for law and tradition, “because the rule of law is the shield that protects the individual from government corruption and abuse of power, allows families to live without fear …” (pp1-2). All that, of course, was well before January 6th, 2021. Post 1945, the US built the rules-based international order and the range of international institutions but then neglectfully stood by while malign actors subverted it. Internationally, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are constantly plotting to do America in while drug cartels and Islamists are doing their bit to sneak in and destroy the US from within. At home, excessive regulation and burdensome taxes crushed American enterprise. The real interest, however, is the jarring contrast between what they said in Trump’s first year compared with what they have done since:
(p9): We will work with other countries to detect and mitigate outbreaks early to prevent the spread of disease (p9) (Covid was an American disaster, made worse by blaming China and everybody else).
(p13): We will promote cybersecurity (DOGE eliminated many such programs).
(p14): Promote US resilience to disasters (Trump and DOGE broke the emergency programs at FEMA).
(p20): Promote research and innovation (In fact, it was Trump who declared war on “woke” universities and cancelled billions of dollars of research projects).
(p25): Peace through Strength: Russia seeks to … establish spheres of influence near its borders … (Actually, all powers do. Just ask Cuba and Venezuela).
(p42): The United States will continue to lead the world in humanitarian assistance (As in, for example, withdrawing from WHO, UNRWA, HIV programs and so on).
It continues in this vein and gets pretty boring. Under Trump, everything good flows from the high-minded spirit of the US while everything bad in the world is somebody else’s fault. In truth, we can’t blame Trump for that, it’s an old American line. For example, the crippling trade imbalances are because other countries take advantage of US generosity and cheat and lie and steal, not because the US lives beyond its means. There is so much trouble in the Middle East and Caucasus but it’s not Uncle Sam’s fault: “With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior …” (p47). Afghanistan? Iraq? Cuba? Venezuela? Libya? Somalia? Yemen? Iran? No, not us, our motives are pure.
These documents are already compressed so it’s difficult to summarise them. The 2025 NSS isn’t long and is widely spaced with few big words so readers should check it to see that my comments are fair. In my opinion, the US NSS is just juvenile propaganda, the sort of thing that’s waved at foreigners and opponents in Congress to silence them. Do the authors seriously expect anybody to believe it? Apparently they do. Regardless, the latest one is revealing. Time and time again it says Trump is the greatest, most far-sighted, beneficial and generally all-round wonderful guy to have graciously accepted the title of Leader of the World, and we are all so much better off for his deigning to occupy the Oval Office. That’s rubbish, of course, just the bureaucrats pandering to Trump’s narcissism so they can be noticed. The US itself is the world’s only divinely-favoured, far-sighted, generous, innovative and amazing country full of inspired and inspirational people, built on enviable principles and governed by noble spirits, which can do no wrong but, unfortunately, it’s surrounded by an axis of evil, by cheats, thieves and drug dealers, and layabouts in moral decline so in order to reverse all this, the US must remain the most powerful country in history, unrestrained by pettifogging human rights treaties, ready to use lethal force when necessary. And isn’t that all the time?
While the Strategy starts with the position that any and all conflict in the world is generated by bad people, that’s outright deception. Morality doesn’t get a look in. On every page, every paragraph, we find the same message: “Yes, we have declined but it’s not our fault, it’s those bad people. We have the moral right and duty to impose our system on them so they stop being bad.” For example, p51 of NSS 2017, re Western Hemisphere: “We will isolate governments that refuse to act as responsible partners in advancing hemispheric peace and prosperity.” That means: “If you don’t do exactly as we say, we’ll strangle you.” Every page drips with contradictions and schoolboy howlers but we needn’t worry too much, the US will continue its profit-driven, impulsive and generally rudderless course until it hits a rock, especially as its captain is now a dementing old fool who, as the woman who knows him better than most avers, believes he can do what he likes and can do no wrong. So make sure your seatbelt is tightly fastened.
The whole of this Strategy thing should be read, not as an exercise in morality (as in “Us Goodies vs Them Baddies”) but from the point of view of its authors who have an agenda which reads “We’re wonderful, you’re shit so we’re going to take what we want,” i.e. fascism. It is precisely the principles outlined in the concept of Narcisso-Fascism: that, as hierarchical animals, humans have an unquenchable drive to dominate and will stop at nothing to get to the top. This drive is, however, coupled with an equally unquenchable but opposite drive to resist domination such that people will fight to death to preserve their freedom. This is the paradox of hierarchy. These drives are universal, genetically programmed and implemented biologically by hormonal systems common to most living creatures. By having two equal, opposite and intensely self-reinforcing drives in each and every human, we are potentially set up for permanent conflict. The conjoined twin urges to dominate and to resist are by far the most frequent and most powerful cause of conflict in the world. However, unlike bull elephant seals fighting over their harem, we humans are intellectually capable of resolving our differences and living in peace. Trouble is, the people who get power are emotionally incapable of doing this. As Thucydides said, their leitmotif is: “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.”
The paradox of the US, as this Strategy makes crystal clear, is that the country that once fought tyranny for its freedom is now determined to impose its own version of tyranny on the rest of the world. Entirely predictably, their urge to dominate provokes resistance from their targets, which is then blamed on the victim, as we see in the ceaseless provocations the US launches against Venezuela. Granted the current regime in Venezuela is not very nice but it started as a revolutionary program to take back control of their oil wealth and use it for the benefit of the people instead of all the profits going to multinationals. From the beginning, the US has done everything it could to throttle their revolution, using the same plan as Iran in 1953. However, those wicked Venezuelans haven’t cooperated with Uncle Sam so now they’re being set up for attack for reasons everybody can see are a pack of lies.
How is it that the apparently intelligent and educated people charged with writing this thing are so insightless as to its real intent? We can dismiss them pretty quickly: they’re unwavering sycophants and opportunists who are using this opportunity to get themselves up the greased ladder of the Trumpian White House before they upset somebody and get kicked out. Most of them don’t have much real influence but were representing the various squabbling factions in Trump’s terminally dysfunctional court –internationalists, mercantilists, the MAGAts and America-Firsters, nativists, Zionists and other religious primitives, and militarists, not to overlook his implausibly corrupt family. There are about 5,000 people in the US power elite who can actually get their plans and policies implemented. They divide in three groups:
The insightless, who believe their own propaganda just because it feels so much better than accepting the truth of their country, that it is a violent, venal swamp (their word) that causes most of the trouble in the world;
The venal who, as long as they get rich, don’t give a damn about anybody else including the unborn generations who will curse our names as their world slowly cooks;
The Machiavellian (aka evil), who are only interested in gaining power for power’s sake and don’t care who they have to crush in the process; indeed, they will enjoy crushing them because standing over people is its own reward.
There may be a few genuine people in Congress or with access to power but they’re not going anywhere. They’ll be elbowed aside by the hogs stampeding to the troughs.
The goals and policies set out in the Trump National Security Strategy have practically nothing to do with the country’s security, and that’s even if Trump can focus his blowfly level of attention on them long enough to get them implemented. It is a program for world domination by another name. We can predict with 100% certainty that some countries will resist, for which the US plan is to assault them by various means until they submit. American violence only ever ratchets up, not down, because the power elite are incapable of admitting they lost. The attitudes written into this Strategy are a recipe for continuing international instability, the direct cause of the great majority of trouble in the world today, up to and including the risk of nuclear war. There is no prospect for a peaceful world while one country assumes the right to dominate everybody else in any way it sees fit, by any means at its disposal. While this applies to the US on the world stage, it also applies to any country that adopts similar attitudes in its local area.
The greater part of human history has simply been the record of people fighting against oppression for their freedom to set their own course. Humans just don’t want to be oppressed. Is that so difficult to understand?
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I probably won’t post these over Christmas-New Year but have a good one anyway.
My critical works are best approached in this order:
The case against mainstream psychiatry:
McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).
Development and justification of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At Amazon.
Clinical application of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.
Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:
McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.
The whole of this work is copyright but may be copied or retransmitted provided the author is acknowledged.
Is it your personal view, as some other historical-social analysts have hoped, that China's cultural roots being quite different to all the other extant western civilisations that are more or less based upon Roman models of paranoid Empire, when/if they achieve ascendency, they might behave differently and create a better psychic, diplomatic and nodal world?