Ukraine must negotiate without the US
Trump is spelling out a grim future for the country if it relies on the US for security guarantees.
Donald Trump is eyeing the rich mineral resources in Ukraine as a potential concession for further assistance to the embattled country, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky seems ready to take the deal.
"We are going to have all this money in there, and I say I want it back. And I told them that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion worth of rare earth," Trump told reporters Monday, adding that "They have essentially agreed to do that”.
Meanwhile in a new interview with the Guardian published this morning, Zelensky seemed to confirm Trump’s last comment: Shaun Walker reports that he “would offer American companies lucrative reconstruction contracts and investment concessions to try to get Trump onside.”
Though geological data about the country is sparse, experts believe that the country has abundant lithium and titanium resources — used for batteries and aerospace technologies, respectively.
Zelensky also used the interview to chide “voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans”.
“I always say no,” he said. “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees.”
But as this blog recently noted, those voices make up the majority of Ukrainians, with only 49% of respondents saying that Donald Trump should play a significant role in negotiations. In contrast, 70% said that the European Union should be involved.
Rank-and-file Democrats have excorciated Trump’s proposal (see this thread for example), but electeds have largely been silent thus far — in part, because both parties have a long history of strip-mining the third world for resources. Trump’s proposal is barely distinguishable, for example, from Neera Tanden’s leaked proposal that Libya “pay us back” with oil:
Europe, of course, has its own history of pillaging the third world, but Ukraine is at this point likely to get a better deal from the EU than from Trump. If Zelensky wants to preserve anything of post-war Ukraine, he should listen to the majority of his country and boot the US from the negotiating table.
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