Ukraine: End the War or Escalate it?

The Risks with Strong Leaders

Can Donald Trump's decisional power end the Ukraine war, or does he risk repeating historical mistakes made by people who had nearly absolute decisional power?

The problem with the war in Ukraine is well described by Aurelien, a former diplomat with plenty of direct experience in these matters. Here, is an extended excerpt from his blog:

We’ll start with some practical considerations of political sociology and psychology. The first is that politics is the classic example of the Sunk Costs phenomenon in action. The longer you continue with a course of action, no matter how stupid, the less willing you are to change it. Changing it will be interpreted as acknowledging error, and acknowledging error is the first stage in losing power. In this case the old defence (“personally I always had doubts…”) is just not going to wash, give the gratuitously psychopathic terms in which western leaders have expressed themselves about Russia.

The second is the absence of any articulated alternative. (“So, Prime Minister, what do you think we should do instead then?) The very fact of not understanding the dynamics of a crisis means that you are helpless to propose a sensible solution to it. It’s better to stay with a sinking ship in the hope of rescue than to jump blindly into the water. Maybe a miracle will happen.

The third is to do with group dynamics, in this case the dynamics of nations. In a situation of fear and uncertainty like the present, solidarity comes to be seen as an end in itself, and nobody wants to be accused of “weakening the West” or “strengthening Russia.” If you have to be wrong, best be wrong in the company of as many others as possible. There are enormous disincentives to being the first to suggest that maybe things are looking pretty bleak, and in any event what are you going to propose instead? The chances of thirty-odd nations being able to agree on a different approach to the present one are effectively zero, not helped by the fact that the United States, which might otherwise give a lead, is politically paralysed until perhaps the spring of next year.

The fourth is to do with isolation and groupthink. Everybody in your own government, everybody you speak to in other governments, every journalist and pundit that you come across says the same thing: Putin can’t win, Russia is taking massive casualties, we must rebuild Ukraine, Putin is scared of NATO blah blah. Everywhere you turn, you get the same messages, and your staff write the same messages for you to deliver to others. How could you not wind up assuming all this is true?

As we watch what could be the last phase of the war in Ukraine, we can start asking ourselves how this disaster could have happened. Did we really see hundred of thousands of people dying and the infrastructure of an entire country really disintegrated? For which reason, exactly?

I’ve pointed out before that NATO has no strategy for Ukraine, and no real operational plan. It just has a series of ad hoc initiatives, glued together by vague aspirations unrelated to real life, and by the hope that something will turn up.

…. The defeat of the West—not yet even recognised as such—is at once intellectual, organisational and political. The ruling classes of the West seem to have no idea at all what has happened to them and why, nor what is likely to follow.

It seems we find ourselves mired in Ukraine’s swamp by a step-by-step approach in which nobody could see any way to act except repeating the previous mistakes, but on a bigger scale. This approach is called the “Easter Island Fallacy,” which states that all problems will be solved if we just build bigger statues.

To drain Ukraine’s swamp, you need someone with the power to say “enough.” Buoyed by his electoral success, Donald Trump may have this power, and he may be able to keep it at least for some time. So, he has a unique chance to end the war by getting rid of the awful band of sycophants, warmongers, profiteers, psychopaths, devil worshippers, and worse, who have been determining Western politics in Ukraine up to now.

On the other hand, too much decisional power can also be a problem. We all know how great leaders tend to make great mistakes, and the consequences of the related disasters fall on everyone. For example, let me comment on another strong leader, Benito Mussolini, who had nearly absolute decisional power from 1922 to 1943. (See my previous posts here and here.)

Mussolini was, basically, a provincial bully accustomed to winning by intimidation. During the initial stages of his career, he was careful to choose weak enemies that could be easily bullied into submission. But he became overconfident and created his own swamp of incompetent sycophants surrounding him. Disasters ensued, and his last years in power seemed to be dedicated to destroying Italy and killing as many innocent people as possible. Eventually, that specific swamp could be drained only by having Mussolini shot and then his body hanged by the feet in a public square.

In 1940, Mussolini launched the Italian army in an ill-conceived campaign against Greece that could have ended with a complete Italian defeat had the Germans not intervened to force Greece to surrender. In one of the darkest moments of the campaign, an enraged Mussolini sent a written order to the Italian Air Force to “destroy all the Greek cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants.”  (as reported by Mario Cervi in his book The Hollow Legions (1966)).

Among other things, this order by Mussolini is a good example of the fascination that aerial bombing has with dictators, as I discuss in my book “Exterminations.” Fortunately, the Italian air force of the time couldn’t possibly have carried out the task. But can you imagine what could have happened if Mussolini had a “red button” in his office that would unleash a nuclear war? Unimaginable, yes, but note that in our times we have several individual leaders who have, in principle, the authority to press that button and to unleash nuclear destruction over entire states.

Will Donald Trump be able to do better than Mussolini? His first four years as president show that he is no warmonger and doesn’t see wars as the answer to any problem. But the risks of entrusting so much power to a single man are enormous.