The Hundred Years War Donald Trump should know about

Donald Trump should heed Dwight Eisenhower’s advice, where he warned the US that the corrupting influence of the ‘military-industrial complex’ would distort every political institution and threaten democracy itself

With days to go for the inauguration of United States President Donald Trump when all eyes had turned to Washington, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer headed in an easterly direction on two back-to-back visits to Kiev and Warsaw. 

Starmer, a trained barrister who honed his wits in the smithies of logic and legality, at one stroke shifted the narrative of Britain’s special relationship with the US from the clutches of tech billionaire Elon Musk — and prompting Trump to voice praise.

Starmer had a profound agenda — signing of a landmark 100-year partnership treaty with Ukraine and commencement of talks for a Defence and Security Treaty with Poland to bring the two NATO countries “even closer together to tackle shared threats.” 

It was Starmer’s Churchillian moment. The leitmotif is the bolstering of Ukraine’s military capability to ward off Russian threats. The treaty signed in Kiev on January 16 envisages military collaboration on ‘maritime security through a new framework to strengthen Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and Azov Sea security’ and commits Britain to Ukraine’s long-term security for the next century.

It explores, inter alia, ‘options for deploying and maintaining defence infrastructure’ in Ukraine, including military bases, logistics depots, reserve military equipment storage facilities, and war reserve stockpiles to ‘effectively respond to security and military challenges’; proposes an increase in F-16s for Ukraine, and supply of other fighter jets used by NATO as well; deepening naval co-operation through ‘joint activities’, and establishing naval bases in the Black Sea, apart from committing Britain to provide military aid of 3 billion pounds annually ‘for as long as needed to support Ukraine.’

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy while introducing the treaty told the House of Commons it was a “strategic necessity” for Britain and its allies. Echoing the footfalls of Europe lurching toward World War II, Lammy declared, “If Putin wins in Ukraine, the post-war order… which has kept us all safe for more than eight decades, will be seriously undermined. Foundational principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity will be shaken, and a more dangerous world will result. That is why the Government will not falter, it is why the Prime Minister travelled to Kyiv, and it is why we stand firmly with Ukraine, today, tomorrow, and for generations to come.”

Britain’s acts are always anchored in historical memory. Russia was and is Britain’s most persistent and formidable opponent and as two principal global (and European) powers, their interests clashed worldwide through modern history. Boris Johnson, with Joe Biden leading from the rear, cold-bloodedly undermined the peace agreement negotiated between Kiev and Moscow in March-April 2022 (within weeks of Russia’s special military operation) to kickstart the proxy war to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. 

Britain’s next move will be to assemble a ‘coalition of the willing’ to wage a hundred years war if need be — for the third time in European history. Starmer expects Donald Trump to backtrack under the weight of European opinion. Clearly, Kiev’s singular disinterest in peace talks and the raison d'être of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's so-called 10-point peace plan falls into perspective.

The spectre that is haunting Russia is between bad choices. Russia might agree to a ceasefire only if it begins running out of resources — economically, militarily, or politically — but such a truce would only postpone the conflict for months or years. The alternative will be to conserve resources, reduce its offensive operations, and impose the solution of a ‘Palestinianised’ Ukraine — a fragmented, militarised hotbed of instability in the western part of Dnieper. (There could be another possibility but unthinkable — an outright NATO military intervention, all-out escalation, and world war.) 

Starmer messaged a strong body of Western opinion that the war has not been lost. But what if that turns out to be delusional? Russian history bears out that facing Western invasions, the Kremlin’s reaction will be retaliation by escalating the crisis. And Moscow may bet on Ukraine’s eventual collapse under the crushing weight of Russian military and economic pressure to impose peace, creating conditions for its long-term security.

Of course, these alternatives are out of Russia’s control and yet it is pressing forward hoping time works in its favour. Russia’s preferred choice is a Third Way — a return to the nature of the Yalta-Potsdam system enshrined in the UN Charter. Article 25 states that resolutions of the UN Security Council are mandatory for all members.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov highlighted this tantalising thought at a news conference in Moscow on the performance of Russian diplomacy in 2024: 

“There are two aspects of security. The threats at our Western borders, which are one of the biggest original causes of the conflict, must be eliminated. This can only be achieved in the context of broader agreements. We are ready to discuss security guarantees for a country that is now called Ukraine, or for the part of this country that remains undecided in terms of self-determination – unlike Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya. 

“As important as this aspect is, the Eurasian context will dominate because the western part of the continent cannot shut itself off from giants like China, India, Russia, the Persian Gulf and the entire South Asia, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Hundreds of millions of people populate this region. We must develop the continent to ensure that the issues of its central part, the Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Far East, the Taiwan Strait, and the South China Sea are handled by the countries of the region rather than by former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said that NATO would operate there because the alliance’s security depends on the Indo-Pacific Region.” 

Lavrov is a wise man (in the best sense of the word) whose prescience matches US President Dwight Eisenhower’s who once said, “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. Whenever I run into a problem I can’t solve, I always make it bigger. I can never solve it by trying to make it smaller, but if I make it big enough, I can begin to see the outlines of a solution.” 

Trump should heed Ike’s advice, the sanest of all Cold War-era US presidents who strove hard for detente with the USSR — who, despite his military background and being the only general to be elected US president in the 20th century, had warned the nation in his Farewell Address from the Oval Office with regard to the corrupting influence of what he described as the “military-industrial complex” that would distort every political institution in his country and threaten democracy itself.

(M K Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.