Is Donald Trump Giving Peace A Chance?

Thoughts On The "Minerals Deal" President Trump Has Negotiated With Ukraine

Multiple corporate media outlets have reported that Presidents Donald Trump and Volodomyr Zelensky have reached an initial “framework agreement” by which the United States will receive a hefty piece of future revenues derived from exploiting Ukraine’s untapped mineral and energy resources.

If the leaked text of the agreement published by the Kyiv Independent is accurate, there is very little which can be said about the terms of the agreement, for the simple reason that there are very few substantive terms to the agreement. Whether this deal is a good or bad deal for the United States is a question that will not be answered for many months, possibly years.

That being said, the text of the agreement that has been leaked to the public is part of the overall context in which the United States and Russia (and, eventually, Ukraine) are negotiating on how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Russia Is To Be Excluded

The text of the agreement does not mention Russia or Russian President Vladimir Putin directly, but there is very little doubt that a primary objective of the agreement is to exclude Russia from participating in any exploitation of Ukraine’s undeveloped mineral and energy resources.

That much is made clear by one of the articulated predicates to the agreement:

WHEREAS the United States of America and Ukraine wish to ensure that those States and other persons that have acted adversely to Ukraine in the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine following a lasting peace;

The world can only speculate on the full panoply of reasons Putin had for invading Ukraine in 2022, but Putin’s anachronistic view of geopolitics—a view which is more in keeping with 19th-century perspectives on territorial conquest—certainly does not exclude the potential of expropriating Ukraine’s mineral wealth for Russia’s benefit. Even in Putin’s 2021 revisionist and ethnonationalist rationale for Russia retaking Ukraine there were oblique references to Ukraine’s natural resources.

To the extent that Ukraine has untapped mineral resources, it is not at all unreasonable to presume that Putin would like Russia to get at least a slice of that economic pie.

If the agreement text that has been leaked is indeed the foundation agreement for the United States participating in the exploitation of Ukraine’s mineral resources, Russia willl not be getting even a crumb from that pie. There can be little doubt that Putin and Russia are at the top of the list of “States and other persons that have acted adversely to Ukraine”.

Europe Does Not Profit From Ukraine

That this is a bilateral agreement between the United States and Ukraine for joint development of Ukraine’s mineral and energy resources also has the consequence of largely excluding Europe from any direct participation in any development deals.

In true “America First” fashion, Donald Trump’s negotations have produced an investment agreement which purports to speak to US and Ukrainian interests. Europe is only an afterthought within the text of the agreement.

In drafting the Fund Agreement, the Participants will strive to avoid conflicts with Ukraine’s obligations under its accession to the European Union or its obligations under arrangements with international financial institutions and other official creditors.

Europe and the EU might be able to pursue claims for accelerated reimbursement of loans made to Ukraine, or perhaps might want to swap those loans for participation in the investment fund to be established, but Ukraine will be under no extraordinary pressure to agree to any EU proposals in that regard.

The United States Has A Defined Interest In Ukraine

As I noted when Ukraine’s agreement to this deal was first reported, this deal by its very nature gives the US a defined articulable interest in supporting Ukraine even militarily.

This is not to say that the United States now has the makings of a casus belli for going to war with Russia over Ukrainian sovereignty. The US does not have that and this agreement does not give the US that.

But this agreement does allow President Trump to point to something concrete and explicit as a governing rationale for providing any further military aid to Ukraine. With an agreement of this sort in place, supporting Ukraine militarily not only supports Ukrainian sovereignty, but also preserves US economic assets related to Ukrainian mineral wealth.

That may or may not be persuasive among Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters, the vast majority of whom want US aid to Ukraine stopped. However, persuasive or not, it is an argument that President Trump can make as an appeal to the American electorate to remain supportive of further funding of Ukraine’s war effort should he see the need to do so.

If Putin’s negotiating strategy has been based on the US simply being unwilling to continue supporting Ukraine, such a presumption by Putin would have to be re-evaluated.

We should take care not to overstate the significance of this when assessing President Trump’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine. This shift in the geopolitical backdrop for those negotations does not completely undercut Russia’s leverage.

However, if Donald Trump can put forward a reasonable argument for the US to actually continue supporting Ukraine militarily, then Putin cannot rely on President Trump merely losing interest in Ukraine and simply walking away from the entire situation. Putin now has to contend with a United States that is far more likely to be supportive of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Security Interests Are Acknowledged

We should also note that the agreement gives an explicit nod to Ukraine’s 1994 agreement to surrender the Soviet nuclear weapons within Ukraine.

WHEREAS the United States of America and Ukraine recognize the contribution that Ukraine has made to strengthening international peace and security by voluntarily abandoning the world's third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons;

If this agreement is the text which gets signed by both sides, the United States will have made a second acknowledgement of this, the first being the Budapest Memorandum.

That acknowledgement also establishes a further foundation for accepting Ukraine’s own security interests, which the agreement explicitly pledges not to disrupt.

The Government of the United States of America supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace. Participants will seek to identify any necessary steps to protect mutual investments, as defined in the Fund Agreement.

The agreement does not call for Ukraine to enter NATO, nor for NATO countries to provide peacekeeping forces to stand between Ukraine and Russia after a ceasefire is arranged, but it does very specifically leave those doors open. If that is what it takes to protect this agreement, and its future evolutions, this agreement puts the US in the position of not standing in the way.

Peace Deal Or Exploitation?

Whether this deal becomes the foundation for a lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia is a question yet to be answered. There is always a possibility this deal is merely an effort by Trump to essentially expropriate Ukraine’s wealth and leave the country little to show for it.

Still, this deal is to be binding upon the United States, and so the US will be obliged to respect its terms—including those referencing Ukraine’s own sovereignty and security—not just during President Trump’s term of office but after.

If this is a deal which is done between the United States and Ukraine, then, regardless of the particular merits and demerits of the deal, President Trump will have defined US policy towards Ukraine in terms that are concrete and tangible.

Is this deal a “good deal” for either side? I do not know. Nobody can really knows, not at this time. There are too many pieces which this agreement explicitly concedes still need to be negotiated.

This deal could be the start of a productive bilateral US-Ukraine alliance, or it could collapse into geopolitical chaos and recrimination. There are too many unknowns which could make or break this deal.

Still, it is a tangible step forward in the overall process of negotiations regarding the war in Ukraine. If the deal holds, it presents a foundational pretext for US involvement in any peace arrangement that might ultimately be negotiated for both Russia and Ukraine.

Moreover, it is evidence that, despite Donald Trump’s occasionally incontinent rhetoric about Ukraine, he is both willing and able to negotiate with Ukraine without Russia in the room, just as he has signaled a willingness and ability to negotiate with Russia without Ukraine in the room.

Will this make Putin more amenable to crafting a ceasefire and permanent peace deal? Again, nobody can really know if that will be a consequence of this deal or not. One certainly hopes that will be the case. I certainly pray that is the case; Ukraine and Russia both desperately need to end this bloody and destructive war.

What could produce a bit of diplomatic pressure on Putin is the fact that this is a concluded agreement. While Russia and the US are still dancing around each other figuring out how to sit down and actually negotiate, President Trump has apparently already concluded at least one negotiation with Ukraine. By definition, Ukraine is now the more amenable party to negotiations, and that is not a bad position from which to appeal to EU sympathies for future support, military and otherwise.

The best case scenario is that this agreement does motivate Putin to find a diplomatic off-ramp to the war, while at the same time giving the US something to show for the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that have been sent to Ukraine since the war began. That’s the optimistic outlook.

The pessimistic outlook is that this agreement leaves Ukraine impoverished and vulnerable, and inspires Putin to continue his attempt to conquer the country.

Both outcomes are plausible. Perhaps both outcomes are even probable. Only time will tell which outcome is the actual outcome.