Art Of The World Peace Deal
And the Trump branding of peace for Ukraine
Donald Trump says that he wants a three-way agreement with Russia and China to reduce nuclear stockpiles and defense spending. This new world order to reduce strategic tensions would follow after peace in Ukraine.
Trump says a lot of things, many of them outlandish, some of them Greenlandish. Focus your attention on what Trump does, not what he says. For example, he casually announced his decision that military aid to Ukraine will continue. As intended, this item was nearly lost in the hubbub over his comments on the future of Ukraine and the horror over Trump’s transactionalism.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy proferred a ‘rare earth’ minerals deal for months, gauging correctly that Trump’s “transactional nature” would respond to this “transactional approach,” in the words of Constant Méheut at The New York Times. In fact, Kyiv withdrew this same offer from the Biden administration in order to offer it to Trump if he won in November.
A draft of the agreement that Kyiv postponed, and which was reviewed by The Times, included only pledges to share information and expertise on potential partnerships. It contained no financial commitments and was nonbinding. It is unclear whether Kyiv and Washington will amend the agreement to align it with Mr. Trump’s latest proposals.
This story was initially misreported in the American press as Trump demanding rare earth minerals from Ukraine in exchange for continued military aid when in fact the Ukrainians had been wooing Trump for months with lithium, titanium, and uranium. Perhaps Trump meant Americans to get the wrong impression that he was twisting Zelenskyy’s arm.
Additionally, Zelenskyy offered Trump a plan to use Ukraine as an infrastructure hub for selling American liquefied natural gas in Europe. He even unfurled a secret map of Ukrainian metal reserves for Reuters reporters. Zelenskyy never corrected or challenged Trump, or countered his ‘demands.’ He simply acted agreeable.
Then Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent arrived in Kyiv last week with a contract assigning half of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the United States and insisted that Zelenskyy sign it immediately. Zelenskyy turned down the offer, saying it was “not ready yet.” He is holding out for a grand bargain of his own.
Answering a reporter’s definitive question whether Ukraine aid would continue or be cut off, Trump declared Wednesday that it will continue, “but we want it secured. And the money is going to be secured.” Why continue the aid? “Because if we didn’t do that, then Putin would say, ‘we won.’” Then Trump pivoted to his talking point that Vladimir Putin is willing to discuss peace with him, but was unwilling to do the same with Biden. Trump works hard to look good. It has been his style since the 1970s.
To get a peace deal out of Putin, Trump needs leverage. Stopping the flow of military aid to Ukraine reduces that leverage. Trump understands this, but he also has opponents of Ukraine aid in his electoral coalition. Zelenskyy has given Trump a permission structure for continued aid that the MAGA voters suspicious of Ukraine will accept on its face. They won’t care that the details are yet to be determined.
The figure of “$500 billion” is not a serious number. The real transaction that has taken place here is less substance than symbol. Call it ‘the principle of the deal.’ Zelenskyy is open to a minerals deal in principle. Trump can tout his terrific deal as if it already exists. This is basically how he has always done business.
To Europeans, this faux display of transactionalism has been gauche, mere boorish capitalist profiteering. Predictably, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was offended at the initial false reporting of Trump’s “very egotistic, very self-centered” offer to exchange military aid for rare earth elements, as he put it. Der Spiegel:
According to Scholz, the first priority should be to get the country back on its feet. “It's about Ukraine being able to finance its reconstruction.” These are major tasks when you consider the enormous destruction, said Scholz. The country's resources should be used to finance everything that will be needed after the war.
Indeed, it would be nice if the war ended tomorrow and Ukraine could start reconstruction right away. Ukraine also has enough titanium to become a major security partner to the United States and Europe, unshackling them from an effective Chinese monopoly over rare earth metals, for 25 years. That’s plenty of reconstruction funding for the future; contrary to Scholz, however, Ukraine needs weapons now.
Germany’s half-hearted, sclerotic support for Ukraine has been emblematic of the squishy liberal responses to Russian aggression that invited it in the first place and feed the Kremlin’s penchant for hybrid war against the West. Scholz, who seems bound to lose his chancellorship in next week’s national election, is a perfect avatar of ineffectual bureaucratic European governance by political centers that offer their inhabitants a view from nowhere.
In those remarks, Scholz praised Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum for resisting Trump’s tariffs on Mexican goods. He spoke too soon. Trump suspended those tariffs the very next day in exchange for Sheinbaum’s pledge to increase border security. Again, the transaction Trump sought was not really monetary at all. He wanted to display American power and signal to the world that the nation’s borders are closed to mass immigration.
For better or worse, it makes him look strong, and all politicians want to appear strong.
News broke yesterday that Christopher W. Smith, a deputy assistant secretary of state, had brought “an American and two Belarusian political prisoners” out of Belarus in what he calls “a special operation.” Smith called his diplomatic coup a “huge win and a response to President Trump’s peace through strength agenda.”
Who knows if Trump even knew about Smith’s mission when the three prisoners were unexpectedly turned over to him. It doesn’t matter: Trump wants his name on every success.
The crass political branding of Smith’s mission included “a possible grand bargain under which Mr. Lukashenko would release a slew of political prisoners, including prominent ones,” guaranteeing that Belarus will seize more prisoners to trade for other things that Aleksandr Lukashenko wants.
Smith also spoke to further material motivations. “In return, the United States would relax sanctions on Belarusian banks and exports of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, of which Belarus is a major producer,” the New York Times reports. Potassium depletion of farming soils is a genuine threat to world food production — a risk that the Russian war in Ukraine has enlarged. China is a dominant producer of both rare earth metals and potash.
Strategic competition with Beijing dominates Trump administration decision-making. Many hands have been wrung over the United States turning over leadership the of the Munich Security Conference to the United Kingdom this weekend. Vice President J.D. Vance told European partners, including Zelenskyy, that “we want the war to come to a close. We want the killing to stop, but we want to achieve a durable, lasting peace — not the kind of peace that's going to have eastern Europe in conflict just a couple years down the road.” The reason is China.
For decades, American security policy shaped the armed forces to fight two major wars at the same time in different regions of the planet. Much like Trump’s plan for world peace, this strategy was more aspirational than achievable. It is also no longer affordable. Trump is the third and fifth president in a row who began his term of office with a desire to “pivot to Asia.”
Again, this strategic shift has been more aspirational than achievable. As a result, the United States remains unprepared for war with China. A war in Europe or the Middle East at the same time would stretch American resources and require unpopular choices, such as tax increases.
First there was 9/11 and the War on Terror, followed by the invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. Then the 7 October pogroms in southern Israel brought regional conflict to the Middle East again. In Trumpworld, these have been expensive distractions from what everyone agrees ought to be the main effort in the preservation of democracy and the free world, i.e. the Taiwan Strait.
Europeans must get their act together because the United States is not coming to their rescue; America is too busy racing to prepare for Chinese aggression.
Zelenskyy has stated his willingness to meet Putin for a real peace agreement. He wants to meet with Trump before Trump meets with Putin, “otherwise it will look like a dialogue about Ukraine without Ukraine.” A minerals deal must wait on Russian agreement to a lasting peace. “We can consider how to distribute profits when security guarantees are clear. So far, I have not seen that in the document,” Zelenskyy said in Munich.
Putin, on the other hand, still refuses to meet with Zelenskyy. He has not backed down from any of his maximalist demands. He responded to overtures from Trump with a Thursday night drone strike on the protective housing of the former Chernobyl reactor, his latest exercise in nuclear terrorism against Europe.
Trump says he will meet Putin to make peace, and he may very well meet Putin, but it seems unlikely that he will be able to make Putin want peace. Vance suggests that Trump will use economic and military “tools of leverage” to make Putin want peace.
Donald Trump has no native ideology other than the business deal, specifically the branding of properties and incorporated entities. Gaudy as his brand might be, Ukrainians will be glad to let Trump put his name in gold letters on a peace deal that actually delivers actual peace.
Trump would like his brand to include world peace, if possible, while saving costs in American money and lives if not. He would deter China from aggression if possible and also prepare to defeat that aggression if America must.
To this end, Trump wants the war in Ukraine to end, for Europe to shoulder the burden of collective security, and to expand America’s Arctic footprint. (Yes, even Trump’s Arctic policy is about China.)
At the moment, Trump does not want NATO to include Ukraine. He does not want American troops on the ground to observe a ceasefire. Eventually, however, he will have to figure out a way to guarantee Ukraine’s future security, and get Putin to say ‘yes,’ before he can claim that he has made a good deal.
Trump does not want a bad deal with his name on it. He wants a good deal that proves once and for all that he knows the art of the world peace deal. I doubt he will ever get there. It is far more likely that he will realize the limits of transactionalism and fulfill Churchill’s reputed dictum that Americans always do the right thing after exhausting all other options.
