Waking up to the new world

It was fascinating to watch the very public breakdown of US-Ukraine relationship yesterday.

It was realpolitik in real time. There are many explanations on offer, but I shall reject both the extremes. Trump was not standing up for the American people, and neither is he a 'Russian asset'. In this season of conspiracy theories, I have one to offer: That he pushed for a minerals deal, putting American business interests ahead of anything, and his administration realised that either such a deal is not on offer (without security guarantees) or not practical, and perhaps both. In that sense, US-Ukraine relationship did not break down in that extraordinary press meet at the White House, it had broken down much earlier when this quid pro quo was established.

There is obvious moral outrage in Europe about Putin winning. But there is a practical side of it too: For too long, Europeans, and particularly Western Europeans, have enjoyed a lifestyle whose burdens were borne by other people. This started with Colonialism, but this is also the basis of post-war order. Maintenance of that lifestyle needed someone else, poor Americans were sent to die for European freedom when young and entitled Europeans took sabbaticals, bearing the burden. We have reached a breaking point now as this is no longer sustainable. Europeans are being asked to foot their bill, and they are singularly incapable of doing anything else other than telling other people what to do. Therefore, there is panic.

But this panic has more reasons than just one spat. The Europeans have been very good at manufacturing outrages, defining what's moral and what's not. The narratives were differently defined for Gaza and Ukraine. From that angle, it was realpolitik and self-interest all along. Just that we are waking up to another version of it.

In this equally plausible version, Ukraine war was Biden's mess. It was an unwinnable war. If Russians ran BBC, we would all know how this was not about sovereignty or international law (like Gaza) but a simple reprisal against Western ambition to control Eurasia. It would be called a scramble for rare earth materials, or a desperate competition between two groups of declining powers to gain a strategic upper hand. 

Trump made it clear - this was about rare earth materials, which is as precious as oil. Middle East suffered with the oil curse; the rare earth materials curse has afflicted Ukraine and Afghanistan. At the core of it, the wholly European model of taking other people's resources without paying for it, or, by giving 'freedom' - a self-centred lifestyle with sex and parties - in return. 

There is a reality in all this that we don't want to see. That C word - class! Nationalism was a convenient excuse to quell the spectre of class awareness. This is a war of global elite against all others. Americans are happy to keep funding the wars, as it provides business for their businesses and jobs, though it involves occasionally dying in it, for their poor. Europeans are happy as long as poor Ukrainians are being conscripted and sent to the front lines, and Russian and Ukrainian billionaires are happy as long as poor Russians and poor Ukrainians are dying for it. Rest of us are expected to march to the patriotism's band and be advised by the Davos set on how to run our lives! 

All that ended yesterday. Zelenskyy was the actor left only with the costume, his script stolen by Vance and Trump. The calculated outrages were in the show, but different outrages. More vacuous promises from Europe will follow: Starmer is already standing with him in the safety of London, a summit of lame duck leaders who don't have the domestic mandates to raise one extra penny in taxes for Ukraine or send one extra person to fight along the front line. 

The fact is this is how it always was. History is back, not in the incarnation of Hitler but in emptiness of moral claims. It would save everyone's time just to stop pretending for once and accept that this is a different moment of history.