Reparations from the Wrong to the Wrong

The U.S.-Ukraine deal is one-sided, only the United States benefits There is no apparent reason for this. The right thing would be for Russia to pay Ukraine.

It’s probably for the best that Donald Trump’s administration and the Ukraine government under Volodymyr Zelenskyy have now agreed on the basic principles for a mineral resources deal. It’s better than to further escalate matters as Trump did last week, incensed that Zelenskyy refused to hand over Ukraine’s wealth for decades to come. Trump took to Truth Social to describe the Ukrainian president as “A dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

This is classic Trump; he unscrupulously provokes a crisis, only to then defuse it and shift the whole perspective in the process. Because until noon on Jan. 20 when Trump was sworn in as president in Washington, D.C., the U.S. still saw Ukraine as a democracy under attack, a country fighting for its freedom, which the U.S., along with its European allies, promised to support.

But now Ukraine is at best a business partner for Trump, and at worst, a country to blame for being under attack and having to pay the price for it. This is because what is pompously and misleadingly called the “investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction” is nothing more than a contract that guarantees the U.S. income from Ukrainian mineral resources without America having to do anything meaningful in the future — such as guaranteeing Ukraine’s security.

This makes the agreement almost a reparation deal for material damage suffered, not damage by Russia to Ukraine, as it should be, but from Ukraine to the U.S., a deal made under threat of immediate destruction, as was the case during the first round of negotiations between the U.S. and Russia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Europeans are helplessly standing by as they watch what cold-blooded power can do.

Perversion of International Conduct

In U.S. calculations, Ukraine has been assigned the role of onlooker, who must first accept a future cease-fire or a peace agreement in which the country barely has any say in negotiating, and then, if it is able, to provide military security. All the reasons for U.S. and European support of Ukraine’s defense against the Russian aggressor no longer matter. Moving borders by force? Why not, if you can.

Democracy? Human rights? Woke nonsense. Instead, the United States’ priority is to quickly normalize economic relations with Russia, the country with whose dictator the U.S. intends to regulate its spheres of influence bilaterally. It will be up to Europe to prevent such a perversion of international conduct. Whether Europe can build the necessary power to do so is in its hands.