Billionaire Elon Musk’s growing influence hints at Trump’s unconventional approach to global issues, from cost-cutting government commissions to mediating the Ukraine conflict. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)
The speed at which the billionaire Elon Musk has become a point person in a prospective Donald Trump regime is an indicator of how the US President-elect is likely to handle global issues through friends and advisers in positions that may not necessarily be with formal government. Musk, once an Obama supporter who is perched among the world’s richest and who spent $130 million on the Trump campaign after swearing allegiance on the day he got shot at during a Republican campaign rally, might even get an official spot as the head of an efficiency commission to cut government costs. Long before that, he is already playing a key role in the negotiations over ending the Ukraine war.
While Trump may prefer to deal with Vladimir Putin directly, with a plea not to escalate the war, he had let Musk come in on a conference call with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy to try and hard sell a vice president-elect J.D. Vance-inspired peace plan that envisages loss of Russia-occupied Ukrainian territory and an 800 km buffer zone to be policed by UK and European troops.
It is a formula that could see Zelenskyy save face while yielding a little ground to Putin to show the world Trump can stop the war as he had been saying right through his campaign. War is a more complex business, and it seems the UK's Prime Minister is pressing US President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine more powerful missiles to strike within Russia even as North Korean troops have joined Russian soldiers to try and take back territory lost in the Kursk region.
As radically non-conformist in his views as his friends and advisers, Trump has already set in motion plans to free constraints on absolute free speech as advocated by Musk on his social media platform X. Mediating in Ukraine is, however, a matter of greater import, and how this Trump-Musk team performs in marketing a peace deal may well determine the course of at least one war that has been draining resources and costing lives. Whatever else he may be projected to be, Trump is no war hawk.
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