Modern Diplomacy Pensées The Primacy of Intellect On matters of United States foreign and defense policy, it is high time to return to Reason.[1] Why a “return?” During his four years as president, Donald J. Trump created an almost seamless web of policy derelictions and corresponding failures. In this humiliating history of calculated Unreason, Trump’s strategic declensions were the result of both witting dissemblance and outright irrationality.[2] Naturally, some of these evident failures were substantially worse than others. Of special concern today must be the former president’s error-marked postures concerning North Korea. Over time, though perhaps still not widely evident, these accumulated liabilities could produce intolerable outcomes. Where they would involve any sort of nuclear exchange, such failures could be altogether irremediable.[3]