"Racketeering and blackmail": Western experts outraged by mineral deal, - NYT
Date: 2025-02-26 Author: Кирило Загоруйко Categories: WORLD
Ukraine is close to concluding an agreement to transfer part of its mineral revenues to the United States. However, the agreement in its current form will not include any clear security guarantees to deter Russian aggression. At the same time, in comments to The New York Times, the experts interviewed sharply condemned Trump's policy.
In particular, peace agreement expert Virginia Paige Fortna said that such an explicit demand from Ukraine to hand over its mineral wealth, while the country is in dire straits, "looks like a racket."
And Stephen A. Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, commenting on US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz's statement that an "economic partnership" with the US, argues that "the new security guarantee is, in essence, extortion."
At the same time, none of the experts interviewed by the publication could recall a precedent in which the United States or any other country extorted money or resources from its allies during a war.
"It may seem that the demand to hand over Ukraine's mineral wealth is simply Donald Trump's direct statement of a diplomatic truth that usually remains unspoken: that security guarantees often have a hidden price. But in fact, according to experts, his approach represents a radical departure from American foreign policy," the publication writes.
Of course, there are many cases in which the US has used its military power to protect American economic interests. For example, ensuring access to oil has been a mainstay of American policy in the Middle East, particularly when the US defended Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion.
But the United States "never said to the Kuwaitis, 'Hey, you have to pay us for this,'" said Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations. Allies like Saudi Arabia helped finance the Gulf War, but not under duress.
As experts note, Trump's tactics suggest that he is trying to apply the lessons of politics in New York, where he built his real estate career, to the world of international relations. In such politics, every decision is essentially an opportunity for political bosses to extract benefits for themselves and their supporters, and extracting more benefits signals more power.
But scholars who study international relations say that's not how foreign policy works. In international relations, credibility is the most important element of power. Deterrence depends on whether a country delivers on its promises. Without such trust, hostile countries are more likely to test the limits of what is permissible, the New York Times notes.
As experts say, Trump's diplomacy sends a message to allies that the U.S. cannot be trusted to help its friends or will fulfill their obligations.
"And it sends a signal to its adversaries that could have even more serious consequences: that the United States is willing to put short-term financial gain ahead of its broader long-term interests."
