Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Truth Social, Gettr, X, Youtube, Instagram
As we’ve detailed before, the road taken by the Trump administration to end the Ukraine war is likely to be misinterpreted by most foreign policy types who equate economic statecraft with weakness.
The New York Times reported on how senior U.S. officials are contemplating the promotion of business to Russia in order to encourage the Russian leaders and their business leaders to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. The officials are looking at offering the economic incentives prior to reaching a formal peace agreement that could take years to come.
Previously, Russian officials and even some in the U.S. government considered deal-making in rare earth minerals, aluminum, Arctic energy and more broadly in energy, in order to give American companies a competitive edge in those industries. In return, the Russian elite would have an “out” to the war, as they would have economic interests that would be hurt by continued conflict.
As noted previously, this would be a unique type of diplomacy conducted through the medium of economics – just as the US pursued detente with the Soviet Union through economic means and is trying to fashion relations with China through economic interdependence and by generating competing interests among the various ruling cliques in China.
This strategy for diplomacy through economics will undoubtedly be criticized by both the Left and Right interventionist camps as ‘rewarding aggression.’ But the alternative – more bloodshed, more suffering for the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, more energy pressure on Europe to bow to US dictates, and no peace for years to come – is surely too awful to contemplate.
Also in play are the rare earths mined in Russia and which could be opened up to US companies in a package of economic incentives to Russia. China currently dominates the global supply chain of critical minerals and this would be a huge strategic advantage to the US to open up alternative supply chains and reduce the amount of influence that Beijing currently exercises over the global supply chains of critical minerals.
The NYT’s piece identifies the source of this shift in policy as the Trump administration’s increasingly realistic assessment of what it will take to bring peace to Ukraine. Once again, the administration appears to have come to the same, inescapable, and enormously difficult conclusion about Ukraine that I have: there are things of greater value to the Moscow power structure than the war has brought them. And, for now, something of that value must be given to them in order for something of value to be taken away from them.
Appeasement typically connotes a ceding of territory or signing off on unfavorable security guarantees. The economic leverage being deployed by the Trump administration in these matters is not a concession of either sort. To the contrary, it is the opposite of appeasement. At present, with its economy under sanctions so severe as to cause hardship to the ruling class, the Trump administration is offering them a way out. And they are using the one truly powerful weapon in the American arsenal – the US economy – wisely and in novel ways.
