FORMER British prime minister Harold Macmillan attributed to Winston Churchill the quote “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war”, whereas Churchill actually said, ‘Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”
Why is Britain today more willing to send arms to Ukraine, when France and Germany seem more keen on diplomatic negotiations? One possible answer is the further away from the conflict front-lines, the braver you are in your talk.
War should be the furtherest away from the mind of any rational global leader faced with the existential challenges of climate disaster, economic recession, huge domestic inequalities and imbalances.
Most nations need time and peace to sort out all the huge damage to health and wealth from the pandemic.
If we all abide to carbon emission commitments as agreed under Glasgow COP26, we have less than 10 years and huge reforms to get to Net-Zero.
Since war is both energy consuming and carbon emitting, both conventional warfare and nuclear war will only accelerate human and planetary destruction.
But war is not often rational and could be sparked by accidents or pure miscalculations.
As Rand Corp’s latest analysis on “Stabilising Great-Power Rivalries” suggests, a stable rivalry has two defining characteristics:
> mutual acceptance of a shared status quo and
> a resilient equilibrium in which the rivalry can absorb shocks and return to a stable centre.
Both conditions are now shaky in the near term.
Russian President Putin’s red line is that the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) allies have violated a verbal understanding at the end of the Cold War that Russia would agree to the reunification of West and East Germany provided that Nato does not advance further eastwards towards the Russian border.
If Ukraine joins Nato, Nato armaments would be less than 300 miles away from Moscow, an unacceptable security risk to Russian sovereignty.
Putin may be using what conflict economist Santiago Sanchez-Pages called using the conflict threat in order to improve a bargaining position.
Putin has calculated that this may be the best time to negotiate a security understanding with the US when the latter may be reluctant to engage in an all-out conflict not on her own soil.
Russia and the US have one common but important lesson why invasion does not pay: Afghanistan. It is easier to invade, but the costs of prolonged occupation is always huge.
For the US, the cost of the War on Terror was estimated at US$8 trillion (RM33.53 trillion) with the countries intervened or invaded becoming failed or failing states. The failed Afghan invasion of 1979 contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia is unlikely to make that mistake twice. America will not want to get involved in Ukraine since the real affected parties are the Europeans.
Putin may have timed his ultimatum because the US, after the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan, may be reeling from four simultaneous fronts, so that even the strongest military in the world would be hard stretched to cope.
In Europe, Ukraine is clearly a flash point but in East Asia, North Korea and Taiwan Straits are high risks. In the Middle East, US-Iran relations are also on the brink of crisis.
But many observers would agree with former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull that “The biggest threat to American freedoms today is not China or Russia. It’s what’s going on inside the US.”
What the American foreign policy elite is facing is the contradiction between the extension of human rights agenda from domestic to foreign shores and the huge costs from the militarisation of foreign policy.
As Chicago International Relations realist Professor John Mearsheimer argued in his latest book, “The Grand Delusion”, “liberal hegemony”, defined as a foreign policy that emphasises the spread of liberal democracy, pushes America to engage in social engineering on a global scale and a “super ambitious and heavily militarised foreign policy”.
“The United States has fought seven separate wars since the Cold War ended. It is a country addicted to war.”
Pulitzer Prize winner Ronan Farrow’s latest book “War on Peace” laments the decline of American influence through relying on wars instead of diplomacy. He quoted former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as saying “Diplomacy is under the gun.”
The US is also addicted to debt, since the US national debt at US$29.2 trillion (RM122.38 trillion) or 122% of 2021 GDP already exceeded the peak World War Two of 119% of GDP, even before “World War Three” has begun.
Why is inflation, rising interest rates and war noise bad for global markets?
Ultimately, inflation is bad for social stability and any rise in the real rate of interest is bad for fiscal deficits, as is rising military expenditure.
Furthermore, having spent over two decades fighting a war against small powers, re-tooling to fight conventional and nuclear wars would require even higher military expenditure.
Investors are therefore nervous whether stock market levels can be sustained on just more quantitative easing or military expenditure.
The real risk of accidents is that small powers may “free ride” by taking on bigger powers hoping that they would drag Big Power rivals to backing them.
The US greatest fear is that Israel, Ukraine or Taiwan may drag her into an all-out wars on different fronts for which she may not be able to win either militarily or economically. As any alpha knows, not to win is to lose the hegemonic position.
The rational calculation is, therefore, there will not be a real war in the Year of the Tiger, because talking jaw to jaw is better than war.
But war is not always rational, as are markets. And that is why big volatilities and perils lie ahead, as do opportunities.
Kung Hei Fatt Choy!
Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.