by Nathan Smith

It’s a pity that US President Donald Trump is seen as a 6ft 3in buffoon, because he has an uncanny knack for accidentally revealing the nature of the permanent bureaucracy and the insidious mechanisms of the American Empire.

Trump often cuts to the core of a problem by thinking from first principles. I’m not sure if he does this on purpose, but regardless of intent, thinking from first principles strips away the shaky scaffolding of solutions that no longer make any sense because the problem has changed. No matter how complex the scaffolding, even a small zephyr can blow it away with a simple question: Why are we doing it this way? Trump loves to ask this question, and the US civil service often has no good answer for him.

What did Trump say? Well, as you’ve probably noticed, the dumbest war in the history of the United States is presently happening against Iran. But also, this war is both not happening and happening at the same time. Trump is talking to Iran, but he is also talking to himself on social media. Iran is talking about Trump on social media, rather than directly to him. It’s the most schizophrenic, hyperreal and deeply American war I’ve witnessed.

Nevertheless, Trump says he is keen to talk with Iran, but he also decided to recall his “special envoys” from their trip to Pakistan, where the presumed second round of peace talks was to take place. Trump thought it would be a waste of time. Then he told the Iranian leadership that if they wanted to talk, they should give him a call on the phone.

Serious, professional diplomats rolled their eyes at this. But Trump figured that if a President wants to make deals with other nations, surely he should be using the most efficient means and technology to do so? This is thinking from first principles.

Thinking in this way means constructing your reasoning from a clearly defined problem by separating the underlying facts from assumptions made based on them. In science, this means starting with what the evidence shows us to be true. A scientist doesn’t say, “We know the Earth is flat because that’s how it looks and that’s what everyone thinks is true,” a scientist says, “A reasonable hypothesis is that the Earth is flat, but until we have tools that can prove or disprove that hypothesis, it is an open question.”

The problem is that most people don’t think from first principles. So, you can get entire fields, like palaeontology, persisting for decades with no one ever asking whether dinosaurs were real at all. I’m not saying dinosaurs are fake, but why is it that no young palaeontologists are encouraged to ask this question in their freshman year? Maybe we are wrong about really big things, but no one notices because no one ever asks. They just keep adding more scaffolding and calling that a “career.”

Reasoning from first principles seems like it would be exhausting. You’re telling me I need to rethink everything I’ve ever heard from scratch? And if I’m wrong in a deep part of my tree of knowledge, I need to revisit the entire branch structure rooted in that flaw? No thanks. But while it can be exhausting, it’s also a lot of fun to finally figure out how the world really works. The reward for being wrong is that you get to build a better model of reality, which can open up incredible value. We call it arbitrage.

Thinking from first principles allows you to spot solutions that might have been missed if you were to use the received wisdom. In Trump’s case, the problem was state-to-state communication. He knew the best way to talk was directly with a counterparty, and the best technology for talking is a telephone. So, why not just ask the Iranians to dial the White House? Why not indeed.

The reason no other President suggested the same thing is that they are surrounded by advisors who insist the process of government must be done in this way, not that way, since this is the way it has always been done, even though they always struggle to explain why this is, actually, the best way. They do this because civil servants are trained to follow procedure, steaming ahead like a container ship. They are not trained to think from first principles.

Therefore, the procedure of government has convinced itself that it needs diplomats because such people are trained in the nuances of foreign cultures. It also needs embassies in capital cities because, according to procedure, it’s always best to sit across from the person you’re talking to. The status quo works, according to procedure.

Yet while these reasons are all sound, they are the scaffolding, not the foundation. They assume the problem of state-to-state communication is the same in the 21^st century as it was in the 18^th century. Embassies made sense back then when communication was done at the speed of a horse. But in the age of the internet, let alone the telegraph (first introduced in the 1830s, for crying out loud), communication can be achieved at the speed of light. Two leaders can quite literally pick up the phone or write emails.

Because the solutions to the same problem have changed, there is no procedural justification for embassies or even a foreign service in 2026. There just aren’t. Trump cut right to the core of the issue. He looked at the technologies of 2026 and found an obvious solution to the problems of the 18^th century: the telephone. His little question of “why?” blew down the entire scaffolding of a pretentious, outdated civil service.

But in so doing, Trump also revealed the true purpose of US embassies. Let me give you a hint: it’s not diplomacy.

As I said above, there are no procedural reasons for the US to maintain embassies around the world. Trade does not need embassies, and in 2026, if the US President wants to speak to another leader, he can pick up the phone. However, there are many political reasons for US embassies.

Say you are a young, talented person in Wellington. What should you do to get ahead in life? If the US did not have an embassy in Wellington, your plan should be to seek out and befriend the local big-wigs, oligarchs and influential families. The speediest way to win is to find a gap in the local aristocracy, ingratiate yourself with those in power, and hope to receive an invitation to the royal court.

But the moment a US Embassy opens in Wellington, it immediately creates a second, rival royal court directly in the middle of the city. Now all the power-hungry young strivers have an alternative path to get ahead in life.

Here’s how this works: each Thanksgiving, at every US embassy around the world, the staff sends out invites to all Kiwis working day jobs at the embassy and to any prominent local expatriate American in the city. The embassy staff will also invite anyone in the capital city whom they think is cool. So, let’s say you get an invite to the party. Just after arriving, you spot Josephine across the room and move in to say hello. Now, both of you know exactly how cool you are because you each got an invite. You will leave that party with a pocket full of business cards. Now you have joined an informal power network connected to a rival royal court.

Connection to this informal power network means you will begin to matter to the US embassy. Your new goal will be to become more visible to the embassy by speaking out against the status quo of the New Zealand system, thereby planting the first fragile seeds of a future civil society modelled on the American system. Soon enough, the only way you can gain more power will be to do what the Americans want. The more you help to turn New Zealand into the 51^st state, the more you will matter to the US embassy.

Being part of a rival royal court in your home country is generally unwise and a good way to get killed. But if that rival royal court is a tentacle of the largest and most powerful country on the planet, there is no choice at all.

This is how American imperialism operates. The main function of the US embassy is to create rival royal courts and agitate for political change to create US satellite states and vassals. Diplomacy is a side gig. The purpose of a rival royal court is to prey on local power-hungry people and turn them against their own governments. If you’ve ever wondered why all capital cities have the same kinds of people, businesses and buildings, there’s your answer.

That’s why I admired Trump’s first principles thinking. He wanted to solve a clear problem, and by asking a simple question, he accidentally revealed the insidious machinery of the US empire.

Imagine what else he could uncover by thinking from first principles about, I don’t know, education, welfare, law, the military…the list is endless.

Originally published on The Good Oil.