An expected blow-up

Not seeing eye to eye: The surprise spat between Trump and Zelensky when they met at the White House recently has rocked the world. — AFP

ONLY a fortnight after Valentine’s Day, rancour over the Ukraine War poured forth for a world audience live from the White House Diplomatic Reception Room where visiting foreign leaders ritually shake hands with the US President.

Shock from the barbed exchanges came less from the disagreements than from their being so spontaneous and unrestrained. The fireplace scene is the PR set-piece for tougher discussions behind closed doors, yet the scene was bruising enough to suggest possibly more injurious private talks.

Not only did Presidents Zelensky and Trump disagree vigorously on what should be done and how, they differed strenuously on what exactly had transpired before – with Vice-President Vance filling in the blanks. Zelensky sat disapprovingly with arms folded when he was not gesticulating in exchange for pointed fingers.

These disagreements had been simmering behind the scenes since Trump won last November’s election. Until then nobody knew who would win, but instead of investing in the US for continued support Zelensky opted to help Kamala Harris’ ultimately ill-fated campaign.

That choice in a US political culture already sorely divided over the war sealed Ukraine’s fate as well as Zelensky’s for the foreseeable future. His clear partisanship in support of the Democratic Party became an issue in front of the storied fireplace.

As a sign of the seriousness of the verbal punch-up, subsequent events for a peace deal in Washington were cancelled. Zelensky has since had time to count his errors in between touring Western capitals.

More important, however, is the content of discussions leading up to the fireplace exchanges. Pessimism over any prospect of peace could relate to Ukraine’s inability to deliver on the promise of valuable rare earths and strategic metals in exchange for US aid.

News reports mentioned US$500bil (RM2.27 trillion) or 50% of Ukraine’s vital mineral deposits as part of a “reconstruction investment fund”. The Trump administration was already stung earlier by Zelensky apparently having agreed to a deal in principle, only to declare publicly later that a proud Ukraine would reject such demands.

There is a more serious problem in the way of such a deal: the vast amounts of rare earth deposits in Ukraine have yet to be discovered or proven to exist. As Inside China Business has revea-led, only trace amounts have been found, most of what exists is in Russia-controlled areas, and the remainder is not economically viable.

Claiming that vast amounts existed might have helped earlier to boost Ukraine’s bargaining position, but someone at some point would want verifiable evidence of the goods. Due diligence always pays in schemes on such a scale.

Greenland, another place in the Trump administration’s sights for rare earth deposits, has far more known reserves than Ukraine. Yet even that amounts to less than 5% of China’s known deposits.

The White House Diplomatic Reception Room has four doors, one of which leads to the China Room. When Zelensky left his fireplace chat with Trump, it was unlikely that he used the door leading there.

Zelensky is far from being the only national leader to have committed strategic errors. A Europe without any leader with progressive regional vision is teeming with national figures competing to outdo one another in chalking up strategic errors.

North Atlantic Treaty Organi-sation (Nato) data shows Euro-pean members had been free riding on US preponderance by paying less than they should in exchange for the US taking charge. Their problem now is that the US has had enough of doing the heavy lifting – and financing.

Neither Zelensky nor any of his European counterparts had conceived that circumstances could change so abruptly or so profoundly. They are thus caught unprepared, the more so for having hyped up a continent-wide “Russian threat”.

No other European country is like Ukraine in its location, attitude, and intent towards Russia. It may serve the interests of some people to make all of Europe and the collective West seem existentially incompatible with Moscow, but the US is no longer underwriting that notion.

France and Britain have begun to talk tough about “bridging the gap” caused by a US drawdown in continental involvement. But realistically, that would be an unaffordable overstretch and a bridge too far.

It usually helps to acknowledge the prevailing realities, particularly when they are set to develop further. These include limits to Nato’s expansion and all which that implies.

Trump 1.0 began on the theme of Make America Great Again (Maga), and Trump 2.0 is putting it into effect. The clueless Oppo-sition’s complacency in 2016 was epitomised by Hillary Clinton’s exceptionalist dismissal of Maga as redundant, since “America is already great”.

Making America great again is more about tending to the fires at home than firefighting abroad. That made Zelensky’s blunt warning that “you will feel it too” if Russia is not constrained now very misplaced, provocative, and incendiary.

Bunn Nagara is director and Senior Fellow at the BRI Caucus (Asia-Pacific), and an Honorary Fellow at the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely his own.