What If It’s… Aliens?
By 
National Security Journal asked to write a short piece on what the international reaction might be to evidence that extra-terrestrial life was real and on its way here…
And yet if history offers any indication, we are less likely to greet aliens with a united front than with a plea to help us murder our neighbors…
And yet in all of these cases, the encounter with the Other did not have a unifying political effect. Huge numbers of Greeks defected to the Persians during both invasions. Caesar could reliably call upon great numbers of Gauls to support his designs. The Spanish quickly identified and exploited fissures within the Aztec and Inca political confederations, co-opting existing conflicts for their own benefit. In every case, the outside invasion was met not with unity but with dissent, score settling, and opportunism.
This tension is captured well by Thucydides, who does not write about an alien invasion but does have a keen eye for domestic conflict. Seizing a city with Hellenic siegecraft was incredibly difficult, but getting political opponents to start opportunistically murdering one another (often with roofing tiles) at the first sight of a Spartan or Athenian army was remarkably easy.
Even if the aliens just want us for food, Trump would exert all of his waning energies to ensure that Democrats were exported as kibble first.