Beware of 'Rough Nationalists'

Militarists are more than comfortable with Trump’s possible return.

Janan Ganesh looks for the militarist lining in the Trumpian cloud:

At the same time, no one is likelier or better-equipped to butt heads with rough nationalists than other rough nationalists. Trump would both flatter North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and threaten to “totally destroy” him, remember. He had fewer moral qualms with Bashar al-Assad than Barack Obama did, but only one of those US leaders enforced the red line on chemical weapons against the Syrian despot. The other merely drew it. In the populist id, strongman-worship vies with a hatred of being seen to give any quarter to anyone, ever. Even in theory, then, there isn’t an easy equation between populism and appeasement.

Ganesh talks about “rough nationalists” butting heads as if this were a desirable or useful thing. Most people would see this as the path to unnecessary wars, as it has often been in the past.