Summary

Steve Bannon is now out, and with his departure the Trump White House loses one of its most powerful voices for a dramatic overhaul of US power in the world.

Nowhere was Bannon’s influence more evident than in Asia, where a nuclear crisis is brewing in North Korea and China continues to wage its ‘economic war’ with the United States – at least in the words of Bannon. His view was detailed in a recent interview with The American Prospect. In the interview, Bannon offered up his latest foreign policy coup: pull US troops out of South Korea in exchange for verifiable inspections of the North’s military facilities. The interview is interesting because Bannon had supposedly agreed to leave his post around August 7, weeks before it took place. This would suggest that Bannon is already looking ahead to influencing the Trump administration from the outside. Having already been welcomed back at Breitbart as a ‘populist hero,’ it would appear that Bannon doctrine isn’t going anywhere.

Impact

Bannon’s worldview helped create the Trump administration’s Asia policy. Steve Bannon is an avowed isolationist in terms of US military power, and his influence if obvious when looking back over how the Trump administration rolled out its East Asia policy.