The agreement they didn’t sign

I wrote most of this piece before today’s meeting. The analysis of the agreement is I think correct, even if OBE.

The US-Ukraine minerals deal were supposed to sign today has one great virtue. There are no obvious no-no’s, like limits on its territorial extent or obligations Ukraine will find onerous. It really doesn’t constitute what President Trump said he wanted, which was payback for US assistance. It does make Ukraine devote half its future natural resource revenue to the joint fund the agreement promises. But that is no loss since the fund is devoted exclusively to investments in Ukraine.

But if there are no glaring errors, it still doesn’t constitute a “devastating blow” to Putin. The devil is in the details, which haven’t been negotiated yet. Does this agreement apply to all of Ukraine’s sovereign territory as of 2014, before the first Russian intervention? Can the US turn around and negotiate a similar agreement with Russia that applies to territory Moscow now controls? It just isn’t clear.

This is essentially an agreement to negotiate an agreement. No harm yet in that.

No security guarantees

The big omission from Ukraine’s perspective is the lack of security guarantees. The agreement says this:

The Government of the United States of America supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace. 

That is a backhanded way of saying the US won’t give guarantees but will support Ukraine’s effort to get them. The implied source is Europe, including the United Kingdom and Turkey as well as the European Union. No one else is available. The Europeans should bear this burden. Russian guarantees aren’t worth the paper they are written on.

The problem is that the US saying that the US will not guarantee the guarantors. That is, if NATO European member states guarantee Ukraine’s security, NATO’s Article 5 will not apply to their forces. If the Europeans get into trouble, for example with the Russians, the US will not help them out.

That is important. The obligation to protect European forces in Bosnia led to the Dayton peace agreement. Dick Holbrooke convinced President Clinton it would be better to deploy Americans to end the war rather than conduct an evacuation of the Europeans.

Production isn’t going to be easy or quick

Ukraine is a big country and may have lots of resources of interest to the US.

Here are the more “critical” deposits, rare earths and others (the pinkish area in the southeast is Russian-occupied territory):

But none of this is going to be easy or quick to exploit. Yesterday’s NPR interview on the subject suggested it will 18 years from the required up-to-date mapping to mineral production from a mine:

That would be 18 years in peacetime, or in a peaceful area of the country. I’m not holding my breath.

So why did it blow up?

Signing this agreement, which is no more than an agreement to negotiate, would have been much better than a pissing match. But Vance and Trump seem to me determined to sandbag Zelensky, who wasn’t humble enough for their tastes:

Zelensky should not have taken the bait. Who knows what comes next!