President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Michael Anton to be the State Department’s director of policy and planning bodes well for the country’s foreign policy as we enter what could be some of the most dangerous years of the 21st century. Trump’s national security team will inherit from the Biden administration a world in turmoil — especially in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Indo-Pacific.

The Eurasian landmass is aflame with wars and conflicts that some experts worry will develop into World War III unless wiser heads prevail. From 1945 to 1991, we avoided World War III and won Cold War I (against the Soviet Union) by generally following the outlines of a foreign policy formulated by the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in the late 1940s, then headed by George F. Kennan. We can avoid World War III and win Cold War II (against Communist China) if the Trump administration formulates and implements a foreign policy that, like Kennan’s, mixes toughness with prudence and patience.
Michael Anton is famous in conservative circles for his 2016 essay in support of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy titled, “The Flight 93 Election,” wherein he urged conservatives and Republicans to charge forward like the brave passengers on that doomed airplane to save the country from the rot of progressivism. Anton noted that the deck was stacked against conservatives because of the Leftist bias of the educational, cultural, and media intelligentsia; the Right’s unwillingness to fight the Left on their own terms; and the “ceaseless importation” of immigrants that are “more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.”
Of the many GOP candidates in 2016, Anton wrote, “Trump alone ... has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.” Trump, he wrote, was “more prudent — more practically wise — than all of our wise-and-good w...