Bannon's appointment to the National Security Council is a Soviet-style political power play [View all]

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https://qz.com/897950/donald-trumps-appointment-of-steve-bannon-to-the-nsc-is-a-soviet-style-political-power-play/

Bannon’s appointment to the National Security Council is a Soviet-style political power play
By Steve LeVine

In a Jan. 28 order, US president Donald Trump appointed his senior political strategist Stephen Bannon to full membership on the National Security Council’s “Principals Committee,” the senior-most gathering of US security and foreign policy firepower. The same order stripped the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of such status, relegating them to a seat at the table only on issues involving their direct responsibilities.

In an administration explicitly aiming to tear down what it considers obsolete and inefficient domestic and foreign policy practices going back decades, the elevation of Bannon is unprecedented. No US president before has named a political operative to the Principals Committee, less one lacking any professional or academic experience or credential in security or foreign policy, experts say.

The move was attacked by some of the country’s most prominent national security voices. The main objection is that Trump is giving the appearance of a politicization of the foreign policy advice he receives. But the move also resembles practices in non-democratic states such as the defunct Soviet Union, which sprinkled Communist Party officials throughout government to enforce political orthodoxy and report back to the Politburo.

The administration is “inching toward something more authoritarian than we’ve seen in the White House,” says political scientist Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think thank.