Calvin Coolidge once declared, “The chief business of the American people is business.” Even while the previous administration mainly forgot that, it turns out that one of our allies has a better grasp — and understands that he needs to business with the new administration.
Donald Trump got elected in part on a wave of skepticism about foreign aid, especially in Ukraine, where over a hundred billion dollars of materiel and aid went without much accounting for its use. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky understands that Trump wants to force an end to the conflict, and is inclined to cut off the aid spigot in any case that keeps Ukraine from falling to Russia.
Today, Zelensky offered Trump an interest in a free Ukraine, in every sense of the word:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals during an interview with Reuters on Friday, part of a push to appeal to Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal.
The U.S. president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, said on Monday he wanted Ukraine to supply the U.S. with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort.
“If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasising Ukraine’s need for security guarantees from its allies as part of any settlement.
That certainly should pique Trump’s interest. It raises the question: why didn’t Joe Biden and his foreign-policy team cut this deal during their term? They must have had some sense of the strategic value of Ukraine’s natural resources, as well as Vladimir Putin’s desire to acquire them through conquest. (Zelensky apparently raised the proposal last year to no apparent interest, Reuters reports.) A deal like that would have at least allowed some defense of the spending the US has committed to Ukrainian defense, although our guarantee of Ukrainian security in the 1994 Budapest memorandum justifies our support.
Zelensky certainly understands the value of his resources to the US. In fact, Zelensky sweetened the offer by promising Trump to give the US first dibs on exports of strategic minerals:
But Zelenskiy emphasised that Kyiv was not proposing “giving away” its resources, but offering a mutually beneficial partnership to develop them jointly:
“The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most. And they should have this priority, and they will. I would also like to talk about this with President Trump.”
And just to make the deal even more attractive, Zelensky told reporters that he’d like to host American energy producers for storage of liquified natural gas, with which to supply European trading partners. All this and more if you act now! Operators are standing by!
It’s no laughing matter for Zelensky, of course; it’s an existential crisis for him and his country. He needs Western support to survive Putin’s attempt at conquest, and the West should be invested in the defeat of conquests by autocracies of Western-friendly neighbors for altruistic reasons. However, nations generally act in their own interests first no matter what platitudes they mutter for altrusim, which Trump recognizes and is his instinct anyway.
Reuters calls this a “transactional” viewpoint; it’s actually the way the world works in reality, only the elite-progressive clique that has largely controlled Western policy likes to pretend others. Zelensky doesn’t have that luxury. He wants to save his country, and if that means horse-trading for support from the US, well … Ukraine is open for business.
It’s a smart strategy, and it has a good chance of success. Trump certainly doesn’t want Putin to roll over Ukraine on his watch, and while he’d like to end the conflict, he won’t just surrender either. Zelensky is making sure Trump has a real stake in a free Ukraine, one that he not only will value but that his supporters will also accept. And Trump loves nothing more than a deal, too.
