Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 7 June 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
Contractors on the Ground
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – You do not have to be a scientist to recognize the value of rare earth minerals. They are essential for everything from smartphones and electric vehicle (EV) batteries to F-35 fighter planes. They are found in abundance in China, Ukraine, and Greenland, three regions of current geopolitical interest. Even President Donald Trump and Elon Musk could find common – and perhaps reconciliation – ground in this in the midst of their tariff and budget battles.
China is the biggest supplier by far, and the Trump administration routinely buys these rare minerals for use in the U.S. defense industry. It is an unusual arrangement considering China is an adversary jockeying for superpower dominance, but that is how interconnected these two top economies are in the modern world.
President Trump is not happy with U.S. reliance on China, which goes a long way to explain his obsession with Greenland, which has vast stores of these rare earth minerals. Trump has tried to make a deal to purchase Greenland but has so far been rebuffed. He is not likely to give up but may have to settle for a deal that stops far short of a U.S. takeover.
Rare earth minerals are everywhere, but they are only in certain areas in enough abundance to warrant the costly process of extraction and processing. China is way ahead, but the Trump White House recognizes that Ukraine is important when it comes to retrieving these minerals and exploiting them.
Trump was ready to walk away from NATO’s collective defense of the embattled non-NATO country when he and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy suddenly signed a rare earth minerals deal. It was portrayed as an effort to give Trump a reason to stay committed to Ukraine, if only to protect the U.S. investment he had made in these minerals.
One path to peace could be through this shared interest in these rare minerals and the infrastructure – people and equipment – that is required to extract and process what the earth yields. Instead of boots on the ground, visualize U.S. contractors on the ground working to mine and process these minerals.
They would serve as a deterrent to military action because Russian President Putin would surely know that if he targeted American contractors on the ground, the conflict would escalate. He is not that crazy, or at least that is what U.S. planners assume.
In any peace deal, putting NATO troops into Ukraine to help secure its borders would cross Putin’s red line. He simply cannot abide NATO boots on the ground.
Contractors on the ground? It is a backdoor way to give Ukraine a security guarantee while allowing Putin to save face.
Trump and Vice President Vance have publicly questioned whether pouring billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, a country they do not believe is essential to U.S. national security, is a wise expenditure for an administration that promised to end forever wars.
Substituting contractors for soldiers would send a message to Putin that he could not ignore. Lots of people and equipment from the U.S. would serve as a military deterrent.
The whole point is to isolate this as a business venture, the kind of thing that appeals to Trump. It is a win for everybody, for the country wishing to sell its rare minerals, for the country buying rare minerals – and for the overall political climate where the stakes of winning and losing have to do with minerals extracted and not the body count of soldiers and civilians.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
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END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND