Wall St Journal Investigation Published the Details
President Trump is enabling an aggressive effort for U.S. companies, and some of his friends and business associates, to start massive new business ventures with Russia. Business that could go into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Business that abandons sanctions on Russia such as, “a senior Exxon Mobil executive discussed returning to the massive Sakhalin [oil] project if the two governments gave the green light as part of a Ukraine peace process” and “a college friend of Donald Trump Jr. and campaign donor to his father, has been in talks to acquire a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if it is released from sanctions”. Business that thwarts a more open and productive global economy by bypassing European entities who might bring healthy, cost-effective competition to these ventures and instead locks in exclusive U.S./Russian deals. Business that is not about a system more open to all businesses, big and small, to engage between our countries but is rather all about the big players, the wealthy, the well-connected, the ones funneling huge amounts into buying those connections. In other words business that steers the U.S. and global economy ever more toward being an exclusive playground of those big players.
All of this hinging on Putin getting what he wants in Ukraine.
The WSJ reported on this in two pieces, “Make Money Not War” and “What Does Putin Want? far more than just the conquest of eastern Ukraine”. They analyzed a lot of publicly known information but also dug underneath what is known with “dozens of officials, diplomats, and former and current intelligence officers from the U.S., Russia and Europe, and American lobbyists and investors close to the administration.” They first published this recently on Friday the 28th. I expected that by Sunday major news sources would be jumping all over this. It’s huge news in itself. The idea is insulting to anyone who cares about Ukraine or about national sovereignty or stopping Putin from warring on neighbors and Europe.
It would also seem to be a huge factor in how Trump will be perceived going forward. Among the many things he has done that would seem to be insults either to his base, like limiting Medicaid that is essential to many red state rural areas, or to almost everyone, like reducing education grants for training nurses, this may be the biggest. Willingness to negotiate on Putin getting what he wants in Ukraine as long as big business players get big deals, some of which will no doubt benefit Trump. I was shocked that there was hardly any coverage of this. The major news sources frequently cover what each other has discovered while giving credit to which reported it first, but looking through a list of the major sources as of Sunday showed none even noting it, much less giving it the top exposure it needs.
There is history and irony in this emphasis on business. The idea of the U.S. engaging heavily in economic give-and-take with adversaries has been a good idea for decades. It’s what was behind economic engagement with China starting with Nixon. The same with Russia after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. If we’re heavily dependent on each other’s economies then we’re less likely to be at war. But those past examples did not involve blackmail. Did not involve an adversary warring on a neighbor and then saying they’d stop there if we gave them lots of mutually profitable business.
The irony is Putin could have had this without war. To make this Ukraine-territory-for-business notion more palatable ideas have been floated of ways it could help Ukraine. That they could have huge data centers to provide A.I. services to the U.S. That they could have big, profitable trade exchanges with Russia. That there could be a whole industry around rebuilding devastated parts of Ukraine. But Putin could have had all that and better circumstances without war. If he had pursued such economics without war there could be a thriving Ukraine economy heavily engaged, not just with the west, but with Russia as well. He could have a Ukrainian populace happy to be a neighbor of, and on good terms with, Russia. All the wealth and life that Russia has lost to this war could have been avoided. He wouldn’t have the ego thrill of putting a pin in his wall map marking part of Ukraine as his, but he and Russia would have bigger benefits than what they’re trying to get now.
Note that Trump and his apologists will have plenty of plausible deniability to spin this. The business transactions can be profitable to the U.S., though in ways, as noted, that are all about the big, well-connected making deals among themselves. The idea of large trade interactions lessening the odds of larger wars is true, but not done this way. The territory issue will probably be presented as, Russia now has certain territories and Trump may present that as something that can’t be expected to change, even though tougher negotiations and greater U.S. and European support could change that. It was bad when Obama relented on Russia taking Crimea, and it’s much worse with their relentless destructive war on Ukraine.
Whether this approach of “give in to Putin and get business out of it” continues is as much of a guessing game as anything Trump does, being so erratic. He has flipped back and forth from seeming to want Ukraine to give in to talk of arming them so well they could drive Russia out. If he ultimately gives up on, or just doesn’t get, this “give in but get business” approach it makes it no less terrible and wrong that this is the current effort.
A big factor in all of this is that Putin is a liar. After some Ukrainian territory is designated permanently Russian and sanctions are lifted and profitable business deals are running there is nothing but a paper promise that Putin won’t just start up again provoking conflict with Ukraine, nibbling at the edges, and setting up further expansion into their territory or any others he thinks he can get, just as he will have gotten out of a deal like this.
What the Trump apologists can’t make disappear are the massive conflicts of interest, Trump’s negotiators being well positioned to make huge amounts themselves out of all this, as the WSJ piece lays out. And they can’t erase Trump’s history of making U.S. interests entangle with his own financial interests, as with his personal business interests with Middle-East countries and with crypto-business players around the globe.
Trump is selling Ukraine for cash. That ought to be a huge story, and a huge blow to his ability to hold onto his voters and to hold all his Republican underlings in line.
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