‘There Is Nothing ‘Natural’ About Donald Trump’s Predatory Exploitation of Ukraine’

Nuclear great powers openly negotiate the fate of nations lacking that highly sought-after status, behind their backs. Nuclear great powers openly extort regular nations for their natural resources.

Realists in international relations, brushed aside at the end of the Cold War, will gloatingly define our current state of affairs in Ukraine as a return to this natural state. According to their worldview, all great powers are predators, locked in a struggle over imperial spheres of influence, while non-great-power countries exist merely to appease their appetites or to inflict injury on one another through proxy engagements.

According to this view, perhaps it would also be deemed natural to grab every car on the street we find appealing, trespass in every luxurious home that lures us, or walk around with guns tucked beneath our belts, eyeing the next unsuspecting person who comes down the road.

There is no need to delve deeper into the dark corners of men’s souls to understand that humans can act with complete disregard for others—and have done so for thousands of years. Humanity has climbed the ladder of civilisation and created laws to protect people from their own nature. International relations are no exception.

To avoid World War III, the predatory inclinations of great powers must be curbed; those who, out of pure choice, cross the red line of expansionism should be stopped by any rational means.

From a purely rational perspective, stripped of all morality and ethics, the position Ukraine has been thrust into—wedged between a newly transformed American empire and a Russian empire in the process of being rebuilt—is utterly shocking.

After Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time without provocation, and after three years of relentless bombardment, the new, self-proclaimed infallible leader of the United States, Donald Trump, not only began negotiations with Russia without coordinating a unified stance with Ukraine and European leaders, but also presented Ukraine with a bill.

This bill demands payment for military and financial aid provided by the previous US administration with no such conditions attached. To put it bluntly, Trump is extorting a besieged nation—supposedly an American partner—for its natural resources, all while refusing to guarantee Ukraine’s safety from further Russian aggression.

After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected an ultimatum presented to him at the Munich Security Conference, held from February 14 to 16, he faced a barrage of accusations from Trump and his associates.

Zelensky had expressed a desire for the document—which grants American capital an unfair advantage in accessing Ukraine’s rare minerals—to include a stipulation vital to Ukraine’s national interest.

In response, Trump questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy, falsely claiming his approval rating was four per cent when, according to the latest February poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, it stands at 57%.

More egregiously, Trump accused Zelensky of misappropriating US-allocated aid funds—an accusation that reveals malicious intent toward Ukraine’s leader.

While the US President has repeatedly mentioned a figure of 500 billion dollars—though he initially cited it as 500 million dollars in an opening interview—the potential value of Ukraine’s rare minerals could be as high as 10 trillion dollars.

In contrast, according to the latest research from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the US has provided 64 billion euros in military aid and 50 billion euros in financial and humanitarian assistance.

These amounts are significantly lower than the potential worth of Ukraine’s natural resources and still far below the 500 billion dollar “extortion bill” that Trump has arbitrarily imposed on Ukraine. It’s hardly surprising that Zelensky felt compelled to declare he “won’t sell his country” in response to such a neo-imperialist US demand.

Apparently astonished by Zelensky’s resolve to defend his country’s national interests—despite facing threats from both the predatory US hegemon and Russia’s would-be empire—Trump went so far as to blame Ukraine for sparking the Russian invasion, echoing Putin’s earlier claims that Poland was responsible for the outbreak of World War II.

Such alignment between Trump’s and Putin’s arguments has led some to claim that Trump is controlled by Putin. However, it’s far more likely that Trump and Putin simply share a pre-World War II view of international relations, envisioning the world as a dark jungle where great powers reign as its ruling predators.

This isn’t even the first time Trump has echoed Putin’s talking points. During his first presidency in Helsinki in 2018, Trump refrained from challenging the Kremlin’s narrative that Ukraine was to blame for the ongoing war within its borders.

Zelensky is the first leader, and Ukraine the first nation, to face such an impossible position since Czechoslovakia in 1938. Zelensky’s steadfast refusal to yield to Trump’s demands, even amid Russian aggression, elevates him above the historical position held by Edvard Beneš, who is remembered as a capitulant.

Ukraine will fight for its right to be an independent, sovereign nation to its last breath, and it will not sell its fate to either Russia or the United States. Now Trump knows this too. Perhaps he will lower his demands after witnessing Ukraine’s defiance, or perhaps he will abandon it to the Russian wolves. Nevertheless, what we are seeing is a historic display of great national courage.