Peace On Earth And Other Lies
Ukraine doesn't get to sign the 'mineral deal'
If Vladimir Putin wanted to declare victory as was recently rumored, then he is disappointed. If Donald Trump wanted to declare world peace by Easter as has been rumored, then he is in the process of being disappointed. For now, the Chinese Communist Party is very pleased that Trump seems to want a new world order that favors Russian and Chinese ambitions. Whether this new order shall be peaceful is another question entirely.
Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said one week ago that the longed-for meeting between Putin and Trump “will largely depend on whether we can make any progress on ending the war in Ukraine.” While there have been signs that the Russian information space is being prepared for the possibility of a ceasefire, Putin has so far given up nothing in exchange for peace. Voting against United Nations resolutions that rightly call Russia the “aggressor” in Ukraine, even leaning on Israel to do the same, turns out to win exactly nothing from Moscow.
Steve Witkoff, who seems to have Trump’s current confidence, was unable to name a single concession from the Russian side in a Sunday interview at the beginning of this week. Thomas Graham, a Russia policy specialist who worked for George W. Bush, says we should not expect a ceasefire anytime soon. Peace in Ukraine, let alone world peace, has turned out to be much harder than Trump or his retinue had anticipated it would be. See, for example, the bluster and drama surrounding the “minerals deal” with Ukraine.
As I explained two weeks ago, the Washington media circus treated the proposed ‘rare earth’ minerals deal as a demand that Trump was making. In fact, Volodymyr Zelenskyy had withdrawn from negotiations with the Biden White House in order to proffer it to Trump in the event he was elected. Trump was enthusiastic to make a deal, but his terms were unacceptable. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent arrived in Kyiv 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 kind offer, saying it was “not ready yet.”
By last Tuesday, the story was that Trump had bungled the minerals deal. Sensing that he appeared weak, Trump and his team began to cast Zelenskyy as the villain, threatening to walk away from Ukraine altogether. On Saturday, an anonymous source floated a threat to shut down Starlink in Ukraine, implicating Elon Musk. But then the European Union made its own “win-win” offer for a minerals deal on Monday, whereupon the demands from the White House appear to have softened.
When a deal was finally struck on Tuesday, it was framed as having no “explicit” security guarantees, and MAGA-land touted this as a win for America. According to the immediate reporting, Team Trump had meanwhile dropped demands for a $500 billion stake in future Ukrainian mineral resource development. Rather than 100 percent controlling interest in a scheme to extract mineral wealth from Ukraine, the new terms of the deal mandate future investment of funds in the reconstruction and development of Ukraine’s economy.
Ukrainian officials call this a “framework agreement,” the details of which remain to be ironed out. While Zelenskyy has the endorsement of key cabinet ministers to sign the deal, the Ukrainian Rada must ultimately ratify it before any money changes hands. Like most finer points of constitutional law, Team Trump sought to run roughshod over this reality of the Ukrainian state out of ignorance, then discovered they could not make it go away with malice. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday it was “critical that this deal is signed.” Turns out that you can’t make world peace without Ukrainian partners, after all.
As I write these words, Zelenskyy is at the White House to sign the outline of a deal. Vice President J.D. Vance complains that Zelenskyy is “disrespectful” for resisting the kind offer of peace from Russia. Either agree to a ceasefire with Putin, Vance reportedly demands, or else “we’re out.” It is the petulant noise of the world’s worst dealmakers pursuing a fantasy of a world peace deal. According to this hyper-transactional way of world affairs, Ukraine and Zelenskyy are simply in the way of the larger plan for the great rebalancing of world power that is needed to preserve global prosperity without need for American military power.
This is why Ukraine and Zelenskyy are excluded from US-Russia talks on ending the war in Ukraine. When Trump or Musk or Vance calls for Ukrainian elections, they are trying to remove the problematic political realities that lie in the way of their ambitions. Zelenskyy beat this gambit by offering to resign in exchange for serious security guarantees. His popularity in Ukraine will likely soar, whereas Trump is experiencing a polling slide over his bombastic trade wars amid worries about the economy. This was simply never going to work out the way that the anti-Ukraine faction of Trumpland wanted.
Likewise, threats to cut off Ukraine aid have less effect than they might have a year ago. Anticipating further interruptions of ammunition and equipment, Kyiv sought to diversify its sources of aid, and now the European Union seems willing to take up the slack at last. Trump demanded that Europe increase its defense spending and pick up the tab for Ukraine, and so they are. He is a victim of his own success in undermining NATO Article 5, and at this rate, many very well give up an American veto on Ukrainian alliance membership in a misguided bid to win friends and influence people in Moscow.
Ukraine has formed numerous strategic partnerships that the United States does not control. Some of these, such as the Anglo-Danish Gravehawk air defense system, are even designed to be compatible with Russian weapons, in this case various surface-to-air missiles. For Ukraine, a minerals deal without explicit security guarantees makes sense as long as Vladimir Putin continues to stonewall Trump. Vance, Trump, and their advisors clearly mistake Putin as a serious peace partner, so Zelenskyy has assessed that the risks of signing the deal are small, whereas maintaining access to American arms markets will be vital as the war drags on.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy put it best three years ago: Ukraine needs ammunition, not a ride. Donald Trump and friends are taking themselves for a ride, now. They think they are winning, that their efforts will establish a prosperous age of peace. They are of course wrong. Like most of history’s peacemakers who began from a business background, they assume that everything is for sale, that nothing is too sacred for any potential transaction-partner to give up, because everything has its price. They will find that the peace they imagine achieving is beyond any price. They are not dealing with men who think the way they do.
ADDING: Trump has decided that Zelenskyy “feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE.” Accordingly, the deal is off and the drama is on: “He can come back when he is ready for peace.” Seldom has the cognitive dissonance of the transactional approach been so plainly stated. Peace does not happen without advantage. Trump has no idea what he is doing, so he takes it out on Zelenskyy.
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