Ukraine is nearing a deal to hand over a portion of its revenues from natural resources to the United States, under heavy pressure from the Trump administration.
The agreement, in its current form, would not include any explicit security guarantees to deter Russian aggression. The White House has argued that the mere existence of American economic interests should be sufficient for Ukraine, which is facing a harsh reality: The United States wants to be paid in exchange for helping the country fend off an invader.
“What better could you have for Ukraine than to be in an economic partnership with the United States?” Mike Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, said on Friday.
Mr. Trump has long demanded that NATO and other allies contribute more to their own defense. But the minerals agreement would represent a major escalation in his transactional approach to foreign policy. The United States was once seen as the world’s policeman, but to many analysts it now seems more like an extortionate Mafia kingpin.
The explicit demand for Ukraine’s mineral wealth while the country is in dire straits has the “feel of a protection racket,” said Virginia Page Fortna, a political scientist at Columbia University who is a leading expert on peace agreements.
“The new security guarantee is essentially a shakedown,” said Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the statement by Mr. Waltz that being in “economic partnership” with the United States would ensure Ukraine’s security.
Experts cannot recall a precedent for the United States, or any other country, extracting cash or resources from its own allies during a time of war. They say Mr. Trump’s transactional diplomacy sends a message to allies that the United States cannot be trusted to help its friends or honor its obligations. And it tells his adversaries that he is willing to give up long-term strategic interests for short-term wins, experts say.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Friday, Mr. Trump said, “We’re going to either sign a deal, or there’s going to be a lot of problems with them.”
Not just ‘the quiet part out loud’
During my reporting for this column, I spoke to six experts on peace negotiations. None of them were aware of any situation in which the United States or any other country demanded a formal payment agreement from its own partner during a war.
(After this piece was published, Timothy Crawford, a political scientist at Boston College, reached out to note that in 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt transferred fifty naval destroyer ships to Britain in exchange for 99-year leases on British lands in the Ameicas. However, that deal took place while the United States was still officially pursuing a policy of neutrality, and was not a threat to withdraw existing support.)
It might seem like the demand that Ukraine hand over its mineral wealth is just Mr. Trump being blunt about a diplomatic truth that is usually left unsaid: That security guarantees often have an implicit price. But in fact, experts say his approach represents a radical departure for American foreign policy.
There are plenty of cases in which the United States has used its military might to protect U.S. economic interests. For example, ensuring access to oil has been a central pillar of U.S. policy in the Middle East, most notably in the first Gulf War, when the U.S. defended Kuwait from an invasion by Iraq.
But the United States “never said to the Kuwaitis, ‘Hey, you gotta pay us for this,’” said Mr. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations. Allies such as Saudi Arabia helped to fund the Gulf War, but not under duress. “It wasn’t like Dick Cheney showed up in Saudi Arabia in August and said, ‘Here’s our terms,’” Cook added.
The message to friendly nations: ‘Pay me’
The president’s latest tactics suggest that he is trying to apply the lessons of machine politics in New York City, where he built his real-estate career, to the world of international relations.
As my colleague Maggie Haberman has reported, Mr. Trump’s model of leadership seems to be based on figures like Meade Esposito, a boss of the Brooklyn Democratic machine who controlled patronage jobs and ruled with an “iron fist.” In machine politics, every decision is essentially an opportunity for political bosses to extract benefits for themselves and their supporters, and extracting more favors is a signal of more power.
But scholars of international relations say that foreign policy doesn’t work that way.
In international relations, credibility is a crucial element of power. Deterrence depends on whether a country keeps its promises. Without that credibility, hostile countries are more likely to test the limits.
It is no longer clear which countries the Trump administration sees as friends and which it sees as foes. But in either case, his actions also send a clear message that the United States is at best an unreliable and expensive partner — and at worst that it will treat any country’s dependence on the United States as a weakness to exploit, experts said.
“What we’re seeing is a successful short-run strategy and a disastrous long-run strategy,” said Joseph Nye, a political scientist at the Harvard Kennedy School who coined the term “soft power.”
A coercive, adversarial approach like Mr. Trump’s can arguably be effective at extracting short-term concessions, Nye said. Canada and Mexico both promised to increase border security and pursue better fentanyl enforcement, which won them a 30-day reprieve on the tariffs that he threatened.
But in the long term, countries that are currently partners in U.S. trade and foreign policy now have a strong incentive to seek closer relationships with countries like China.
In Europe, there is already a push to increase military spending in order to be less reliant on the United States, which could have unpredictable consequences. Turkey, which has the second-largest military of any NATO country, could become a more important regional power.
The message to foes: ‘Let’s make a deal’
Analysts say Mr. Trump’s foreign policy sends a message to Russia and other hostile countries that may be even more consequential: that the United States is willing to prioritize short-term financial gain over its broader long-term interests.
Or perhaps the United States could simply be bought out with a better offer. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Monday that the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal was not a concern to him because Russia has “significantly more resources of this kind than Ukraine.” He is ready to “offer” mineral resources to American partners, he said, including from the “new territories” Russia has occupied in eastern Ukraine.
President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo, perhaps sensing that U.S. support is now available to those who can pay, has recently offered to make a mineral deal with the United States, granting access to strategic minerals like coltan and cobalt in exchange for support against the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group.
Diminished U.S. credibility could invite China to test the U.S. commitment to defending Taiwan or territories within the South China Sea. That could endanger longtime U.S. partners and increase the risk that the United States could be drawn into a devastating war with China.
Even if Mr. Trump walks back his provocations in Ukraine and elsewhere, as he has done with his plan for the United States to occupy Gaza, it may take a long time to rebuild what has been lost in the last few weeks.
“A lot of the damage to the credibility of the United States is already done,” Ms. Fortna said.
