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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   33228 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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Ukraine doesn't even have meaningful amounts of minerals. This whole talking point is completely empty.

Ukraine has no significant rare-earth deposits other than small scandium mines. The US Geological Survey, an authority on the matter, doesn’t list the country as holding any reserves. Neither does any other database commonly used in the mining business. At best, the value of all the world’s rare-earth production rounds to $15 billion a year — emphasis on “a year.” That’s equal to the value of just two days of global oil output. Even if Ukraine had gigantic deposits, they wouldn’t be that valuable in geo-economic terms.

Say that Ukraine was able, as if by magic, to produce 20% of the world’s rare earths. That would equal to about $3 billion annually. To reach the $500 billion mooted by Trump, the US would need to secure 150-plus years of Ukrainian output.

Take, for instance, titanium. In 2023 the entire world market for the hard, super-light metal was $31 billion. Last year, Ukraine exported just $11.6 million – not billion – of titanium-bearing minerals. Though in theory some 7 per cent of the world’s reserves of titanium are under Kyiv’s control, it will take an investment of billions to create refining capacity to make more valuable and exportable titanium sponge. Even then, seven per cent of the world market would amount to gross sales of just over $2 billion a year.

It’s the same story with lithium. In Lindsey Graham’s imaginary world, Ukraine’s estimated 500,000 tonnes of reserves could be worth between $10 billion and $12.5 billion at current prices. But world lithium sales in 2024 were just $37 billion... according to a recent report by BNE Intellinews, “Kyiv has yet to even begin exploiting its deposits [and] produces no lithium.” Some of the most promising deposits at Kruta Balka deposits in the Zaporizhzhia region are partially under Russian control

It's too expensive to send Ukraine weapons, but also we must put boots on the ground and invest tens of billions into Gaza to make it an Israeli Monaco, or something. None of this is coherent.

Ukraine doesn't even have meaningful amounts of minerals. This whole talking point is completely empty.

Am I missing something? Doesn't that effectively mean Trump was offering to bail out Ukraine essentially for free, and all he asked is a token that he can show to his supporters that he was looking out for their interest in the process of these negotiations?

No, it means the entire deal was worthless. The deal wasn't that the US would continue to support Ukraine militarily in exchange for mineral interests; that's what Zelensky was gunning for. The actual deal on the table was that Ukraine would grant the US rights to 50% of the revenue in Ukrainian rare earths, the idea being that it would give the US skin in the game to keep Russia from advancing further into the country. Of course, if defending these interests is more expensive than the interests are worth, you aren't going to defend them. The whole thing was essentially a modest giveaway. This is why Zelensky kept insisting an a real security guarantee.

Minor elaboration (Actually- major elaboration but if I took the time to write it all up by gosh I'll take advantage of it-)

The relevant 50% clause was this-

The Government of Ukraine will contribute to the Fund 50 percent of all revenues earned from the future monetization of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets (whether owned directly or indirectly by the Ukrainian Government), defined as deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and other extractable materials, and other infrastructure relevant to natural resource assets (such as liquified natural gas terminals and port infrastructure) as agreed by both Participants, as may be further described in the Fund Agreement. For the avoidance of doubt, such future sources of revenues do not include the current sources of revenues which are already part of the general budget revenues of Ukraine.

Which is to say that the US government never gets rights to the money. Rather, the US government gets rights to the management of the fund, the degree of which would be determined later and have to be approved by Ukraine.

If the US had a functional veto over the fund, it could black how the fund was used, but this isn't the same as control.

This is, however, a potentially major sovereignty-infringing demand, since the 50% of all revenues of ALL relevant resource assets could also include all new future projects- regardless of if the US was involved in them. IE, even European-funded mineral projects would funnel revenue (not profits- revenue) into the US-UKR fund.

This would have huge distorting powers over the Ukrainian economy, to American benefit, since an American veto would mean powers either have to include American firms or some other benefit to the US for an American blessing.

The relevant spending clause to directly benefit the Americans would have been-

The Fund, in its sole discretion, may credit or return to the Government of Ukraine actual expenses incurred by the newly developed projects from which the Fund receives revenues.

Any expense the Fund's American and Ukrainian managers agreed was acceptable- with no limits on acceptability- could use the 50% revenues going into the fund. If, hypothetically, that included American arms sales as an 'actual expense incurred by the newly developed project,' well that's not un-approvable.

The relevant not-security-guarantee clause was

The Participants reserve the right to take such action as necessary to protect and maximize the value of their economic interests in the Fund.

Which bears probably deliberate parallels to

take "such action as it deems necessary."

Which is the NATO Article 5 language, i.e. about as strong as American security guarantees get.

So the 'hook' is the mineral fund with American oversight, the scale of the influence was the bribe to keep the Americans in, the ability to charge the fund for American-approved expenses was the payment mechanism, and the 'reserve the right to protect our investment (which would be lost if Ukraine goes down)' was the quasi/not-security guarantee.

Can you find the part of the deal where Trump offers to bail out Ukrain in any way?

Not only was he offering a bailout for free to save face in front of his constituency, but most of those "minerals"/natural resources are already under Russian territorial control.

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