Selling out Ukraine is a new low

The post-war rules-based order is over

I keep getting asked: what is Trump trying to achieve? To some people it is obvious, but for most of us there is still a considerable amount of fog. But while there is no obvious tactical or strategic set of goals, some clarity is provided by each of the daily announcements. The latest is the betrayal of Ukraine.

The Bastards are going to do it

That’s a quote from the BBC’s political correspondent Nick Watt, who, in turn, was quoting an unnamed UK defence official. That’s a reference to the complete sellout of Ukraine by the Trump administration. Negotiations have ended before they have begun. Putin has been given everything he wants before the start of ‘peace’ talks. There is a river of champagne flowing through the Kremlin. Xi Jingpin will be delighted, Taiwan not so much.

Alex Younger, previously the longest ever serving head of MI6, said today that the post-WW2 rules-based global order is over. It’s now about strongman politics and survival of the fittest.

The implications of all this have yet to sink in and are being under reported by most media. Make no mistake, Trump’s proposals (and let’s acknowledge that they are merely proposals) means that Putin will immediately take the rest of the Ukrainian provinces he currently partially occupies. He will, some time in the future, restart the war in order to take the rest of the country. The ‘security guarantees’ that Trump demands Europe give Ukraine will be meaningless. Europe doesn’t have the means and shows few signs of acquiring the necessary backbone.

This is what Trump does. Why?

1. He enjoys being top of the daily news cycle. That’s the narcissistic man-child that we have all come to know.

2. Powerful people are not like the rest of us. Normal people imagine that anyone granted access to the levers of power would use them sparingly and with the best of intentions. ‘First, do no harm’ - that kind of thing.

   Powerful people are not normal. Desire for power marks them out as weird. Once they get their hands on power they are invariably determined to use it - often for no good reason. Just because they can. After all, they often argue, what’s the point of power if you don’t use it?

   Here is an attempt by AI to explain and summarise these ideas about power for it’s own sake:

   Theoretical Perspectives:

   1. Power Dynamics: According to sociologists like Max Weber, power is the ability to enforce one's will on others, even if they resist. Sometimes, people exercise power simply to assert dominance or maintain their authority.

   2. Michel Foucault: This French philosopher explored the idea of power being pervasive …he argued that power is exercised everywhere, and can be an end in itself.

   Psychological Aspects:

   1. Control and Influence: Psychologically, individuals may use power to feel in control or to influence others without a clear objective. This can be seen in everyday interactions where individuals assert authority just to feel superior.

   2. Power and Identity: For some, power becomes intertwined with their identity. They use power because it reinforces their self-image or because they derive satisfaction from the act itself.

   Historical Examples:

   1. Totalitarian Regimes: Leaders in totalitarian states have often exercised power not just to achieve specific goals, but to demonstrate their absolute control and instil fear among the populace.

   2. Corporate Environments: In some corporate settings, higher-ups may make decisions that display their power, even if those decisions aren't the most beneficial for the organisation.

   Literary References:

   1. George Orwell's "1984": The novel illustrates the use of power for its own sake through the Party's control over the population. The famous slogan “Power is not a means; it is an end” encapsulates this idea.

   2. Lord Acton's Quote: The historian Lord Acton famously said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This highlights the idea that individuals might exercise power simply because they can, often leading to negative consequences.

   Here is a neuroscientist suggesting that Trump’s brain resembles that of a junkie high on cocaine. Power is the drug that spurs dopamine production.

   The resemblance between Trump’s daily abuse of Power and an episode of the Sopranos is obvious to anyone with a passing acquaintance with the classic TV series about a psychologically troubled mafia boss. A lot of the plotting and scripting of that series seems to have borrowed heavily from Suetonius’s classic biography of Julius Caesar and the 11 Roman emperors that succeeded him. It’s all about the gaining and subsequent abuse of power. And how nobody in power ever believes, for a second, that they are doing anything wrong. (More on this a bit later).

3. In Trump’s case, the old populist trick of wrapping whopping great lies around kernels of truth has been pulled off time and time again. That’s how he gained power. In different circumstances we might admire a master of this particular art. The script: identify real problems, outrageously exaggerate them, promise to solve them. The three great lies are told about immigrants, wokeism ad civil servants.

   1. Immigration is an issue that concerns many people in many countries. The statement of that simple fact (whether the concern is justified or not) is then used, wickedly, to justify mass deportation, flights to Rwanda, demonisation and incarceration (in Guantanamo). It’s then a short journey to convincing people that white people will be replaced by immigrants.

   2. American progressives (in particular) took ‘wokeism’ too far, too quickly. We might disagree with that statement, just as we might take issue with anti-immigration views. But the tiny nugget of truth is, inevitably, placed front and centre to disguise the lie.

      A backlash is certain if you give people the impression that they are deemed racist just because they are white, or they are the colonial beneficiaries of genocide because of something done by long-dead ancestors, or if they are left feeling unsafe because their police force has been defunded, or if they feel discriminated against when compared to less qualified people. Perhaps ‘Black lives matter’ should have been ‘All lives matter’.

      Here (£) is a superb article by Henry Mance in the FT discussing all this.

      

      Over-reach by progressives does not, of course, imply any need to swing the pendulum back to the dark days when minorities, women and anybody with any kind of difference were discriminated against. But that appears to be where we are headed.

   3. All of a sudden (but also following the script of Project 2025) immigrants are no longer the sole enemy. In the US (and elsewhere) it is taken as obvious that the bloated, inefficient and left-wing public sector needs to be dismantled. All of it. We’ve seen this movie before. A classic British comedy series once won awards for riffing on this theme. This time around, Elon Musk is attempting a proper revolution, one that is not very funny.

      Recently, Dominic Cummings in the UK railed against ‘the Blob’: his complaints were mostly aimed at the civil service but also anyone in the comfortably complacent classes. Again, there is an element of truth to all this: there is waste, there is resistance to change. Too many people have been let down, been left behind. But that does not mean the whole system needs dismantling. What is wrong in the UK and US cannot all be laid at the door of the civil service.

      Elon Musk and his band of tech bros currently laying waste to the US Federal Government say things like ‘we invented the modern world, so why shouldn’t we run it?’ Not a single word of that quote makes any sense. But it is what they believe. In keeping with their disruptor ideology they think that reducing the Federal government to rubble will bring forth a new glorious dawn. Nobody seems to have considered the possibility that they might make things worse.

      Here is Edward Luce from the FT, pulling no punches:

      Just endured every excruciating minute of this. With Trump sitting there, the kid wandering around, Musk gives a crash course in his theory of democracy that would embarrass a semi-literate stoner. These are fools in charge.

      Of course, the consequences of all this won’t be felt by the new oligarchs - they will just be paying lower taxes.

      The ex-Chief Scientist of the UK, now a government minister, Patrick Vallance, has recently referred to the “Maoist-Trotskyist belief that if you break something then something better will come afterwards”. The tech-bros current attempts to destroy the US Federal government include replacing the civil service with conservative Project 2025 adherents. The extreme right deploying Trotskyite tactics is yet another example of the horseshoe theory of politics in action.

Here is Ben Ansell on the same theme:

That reference to London-base comfortable classes jumping on the disruption bandwagon is a recognition that the Musk revolution has acquired disciples in the UK.

4. Bad people never think of themselves as evil. Freud was but one shrink who explored the human capacity for rationalisation of any behaviour. We don’t like feeling guilty or anxious because we have done something wicked. So we don’t think we are wicked. Even when we obviously are. The journey made by Vice President J D Vance is noteworthy. Vance, an obviously hyper-intelligent man once likened Trump to Hitler. Today, Vance takes the knee, kisses the ring and says that everything Trump says and does is eminently sensible. That same journey has been made by almost every member of the Republican Party, the billionaire class and half of all Americans (if not more).

5. Trump will keep going, step up the bullying, until someone stands up to him. He really does have imperial ambitions that involve the territorial expansion of the US. Turning Gaza into a Trump golf resort, Mar-a-Gaza, would once have been an outlandish idea. Making Canada great again by becoming the 51st state is not a notion that not many would have thought about, even as a joke. Suggesting that Greenland might be taken by force is something that once upon a time we imagined only mad, bad demagogues like Putin would threaten.

   There are few signs of anyone prepared to stand up to him. But the West has a new enemy to unite against - strange things are going to happen. I suggest Canada, rather than engaging with Trump, simply applies to join the EU. The UK should do the same.

   Conclusion

   Every country needs to realise that unless they stand up to him, Trump will, in one way or another, come for you.