War and peace — and war again?

As United States President Donald Trump seeks to strike a bargain with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, Benjamin Jensen at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies has looked at how similar attempts worked out in the past.

His prognosis is not good.

Dr Jensen believes it is extremely risky and optimistic to think a deal with Mr Putin will end the Russian leader’s imperialist aims, or undermine the authoritarian axis of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

“In all instances, while wars end and crises are averted, underlying struggles over power persist. Great powers have great interests and rarely are willing to sacrifice them even when they are exhausted by conflict,” Dr Jensen says.

“This means any grand bargain with Russia should be weighed both in terms of its short-term benefit and long-term risk — and while it is impossible to predict the generational impacts of grand bargains — would Kissinger still go to China in 1971 if he read about the Chinese Communist Party in 2025? It is possible to assess the opportunity costs and likely trade-offs the latest grand bargain foretells.”

He believes any deal of land for peace in Ukraine is more likely to buy a temporary armistice than long-term stability.

“Territorial concessions at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, enshrined in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, sowed the seeds of future wars in Asia and the rise of a more militaristic Japan in the 20^th century,” Dr Jensen says.

Asking Ukraine to give up territory would gain favour in Moscow but at the cost of acerbating other territorial disputes in the Baltics and Caucasus.

“Furthermore, the Russian economy has become essentially a wartime economy, meaning an end to war is not an end to the business of war.”

 He says that even if Russia gives security guarantees to Ukraine, which are backed by European troops, it won’t necessarily stop their agents from continuing hybrid attacks in Europe, global cyber operations targeting US interests, and a sustained conventional military build-up.

“For the grand bargain to work, Trump will have to trust that Putin won’t use the end of hostilities in Ukraine to accelerate rearming. In the worst case, Putin could wait until Trump’s Presidency ends to launch a new war, potentially timed with a major Chinese action against Taiwan.”

Sadly, these warning will have little impact on Mr Trump’s thinking. This vain and narcissistic man is after one thing, the Nobel Peace Prize.

If whatever deal he makes holds together long enough (and US pressure on the Nobel Committee is sufficiently sustained) he all probably get his wish — no matter if everything goes pear-shaped in the years to come.

Is MAGA losing faith in Trump?

The painfully narrow win for Donald Trump-supported Mike Johnson in the race for the Speakership of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is an indication that the President-elect may be facing problems with extreme elements of his own party in the months ahead.

It is quite possible that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement that he created is leaving Trump behind in its ruthless race to create a different kind of society – one rooted in isolationism and a deep distrust of anyone that does not wholly subscribe to its Judo-Christian values.

It is playing out in the war of words between one-time Trump strategist Steve Bannon (pictured) and the President-elect’s “favourite billionaire” Elon Musk.

Musk wants highly-skilled foreign workers to be exempt from Trump’s proposed mass deportation of immigrants, claiming they are needed in his high-tech Tesla and SpaceX industries.

This is anathema to Bannon who claims it is outrageous to suggest Americans are not capable of doing these jobs. Musk and ally, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswany have countered this, with Ramaswany claiming the “dumbed-down” television culture since the 1990s is responsible for why Americans cannot compete with brainy foreigners.

Musk went further, using the ugly “retarded” slur on his X platform before deleting it amid mounting outrage.

In another possibly significant development, Bannon has started to use religious terminology in relation to MAGA, calling Musk, Ramaswany and other new Trump supporters from the tech world as “recent converts”.

“We love converts, but the converts sit back and study for years and years to make sure they understand the faith and understand the nuances of the faith, and understand how they can internalise the faith,” Bannon said.

“Don’t go to the pulpit in your first week and lecture people about the way things are going to be,” he said, before reverting to more secular language “otherwise we’re going to rip your face off”.  

Since that exchange MAGA figures have begun to highlight Musk’s South African origins and the fact that Ramaswany has Indian immigrant parents in what is looking like an increasingly unpleasant internal struggle within the Republican ranks.

Meanwhile Bannon, still resentful over his short tenure as an insider in the first Trump White House, is positioning himself as the guardian of the fundamental MAGA faith – possibly putting large segments of true believers at odds with Trump when he grapples with the complex realities of governing.   

 

Rising anger at ‘conspicuous loutishness’

In a recent article on LinkedIn an Indian corporate worker unloaded on the millionaires “with two BMWs in the garage” who give lectures on minimalisation; company vice presidents who refuse their workers stock options because “it’s your company anyway”.

Right-wing economists who complained about the cost of public transport having never set foot on a bus and celebrities that bully their way past queues into restaurants and night clubs claiming they would he hassled for selfies and autographs if they had to stand in line.

“All this is just to keep most of us poor, ugly and average – the world is full of hypocrites selling half-truths to protect their advantage,” the worker complained.

India is a country where the gap between rich and poor is often at its glaringly obvious and it is easy to see how resentment might grow, especially among the aspirational middle classes who find the way to further progress blocked by the rich and powerful.

However anger against the wealthy is on the rise around the world, exacerbated by what US researchers have termed “conspicuous loutishness”.

A video of a teenage Chinese girl burning bank notes lit up social media a couple of years ago. The researchers found that first-class passengers on airline flights where three times more likely to be rude to flight attendants than those in economy class and, in their top-of-the line motor vehicles were less likely to stop at zebra crossings for pedestrians.

Some observers believe that while some elements of the entitled classes have always thrown their weight around, social media and mobile phones mean their antics are much more likely to be publicised than in earlier times.

Also the wealthy of old often abided by unwritten rules of behaviour, keeping to the background often emerging only for philanthropic events that enhanced rather than degraded their image.

Now United States President-elect Donald Trump’s billionaire Cabinet with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, dancing about like a child at a Sunday School picnic, is there for all to see.

Whether culture wars, beloved of think tanks the world over, will metamorphose into conflicts specifically between the haves and the have-nots is still a moot point, but all the indications suggest the answer will come sooner rather than later.