Trump's "final offer" for peace requires Ukraine to accept Russian occupation
Trump's "final offer" for peace requires Ukraine to accept Russian occupation
The U.S. expects Ukraine's response Wednesday to a peace framework that includes U.S. recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and unofficial recognition of Russian control of nearly all areas occupied since the 2022 invasion, sources with direct knowledge of the proposal tell Axios.
Why it matters: The one-page document the U.S. presented Ukrainian officials in Paris last week describes this as Trump's "final offer." The White House insists it's ready to walk away if the parties don't make a deal soon.
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Wasn't it always the case, though? Wasn't he always implying that "Ukraine better be ready to lose some land" - aka we don't know how to force Russia out of the lands it already invaded? Or how to balance the clear conflict of interests between aiding Ukraine stop an invasion and Trump's agenda of getting the US closer to Russia as an economic ally?
Funny. The only difference I see is that he is now fully committed to make Ukraine capitulate by any means he can, perhaps in a last ditch effort to get that mineral deal since he needs it more now due to China stopping the mineral supply. Notice how he only began this ultimatum right after China stopped the minerals. Not suspicious timing at all.
In any case, better for incompetents to step away than fumbling the game even worse than they already did since taking office. Some "help" simply isn't worth the cost. Europe and any other allies of freedom will see this through, one way or another.
Just don't come begging for rewards or reparations once Russia's imperialist ambitions are stopped. The US is only owed what it contributed until Biden left (and the real value, not the overinflated one), plus a nice good discount for the Trump admin's interference and undermining Ukraine. And that's being generous.
I want to note on the "mineral deal" thing that access to rare earth minerals has nothing to do with China's ability to constrain their supply to the US, because getting rare earth minerals is actually relatively easy. They're found all over the Earth, although some areas do have better naturally occurring concentrations than others. Mostly, though, it's just a matter of finding a nice large swathe of land that you can easily strip-mine.
The problem is refining them. Digging up a bunch of soil and rock is easy, getting the trace amounts of rare (hence why they're called that) earth minerals out of the soil and rock is really hard. While it's true that China does dominate in rare earth extraction, it really wouldn't be all that hard for other countries to catch up to them on that score if they wanted to. But the reason China controls the worlds rare earth supply is because they also dominate in refining, which is extremely difficult, technically complex, and not easy to replicate due to the highly specialised nature of rare earth refineries.
Trump can get access to all the unprocessed rare earth minerals he likes, but it won't solve his current problems. First off, even if Ukraine were at peace tomorrow it would take most of a decade to prospect those mineral deposits and begin extracting them at scale. But even then, it doesn't solve the refining problem. You'd just be selling the raw deposits to China so that they can refine them and sell the refined product back to you at a huge profit.
Thank you for the input. Given the current US admin's way of doing things, I have to wonder if they really see the problem in its entirety, or a crudely simplified version of it.
I mean, these are the same people who started a global trade war to get manufacturing over to the US, as if that would magically happen overnight or even with the high amount of uncertainty for business investments. It really seems to them the simplest solutions are the best ones - flip the tariff switch and done, problem solved, the US is great again after "a brief period of hurt" (whatever that specifically means), as if there weren't a million nuances to the current workings of world global societies.
Anyways, regardless of the how's and why's, we can only guess what goes on on the heads of these people...
Oh, for sure, it's absolutely possible that Trump does not understand the need for refinement infrastructure, or simply believes that its a simple problem that will solve itself. Given his approach to trying to rehome US manufacturing its clear that he has basically no understanding of industry realities.
There was a pretty good ABC (Aus) If you're listening segment on the rare earth stuff.
Highly recommend