The New York Times commented on the US-Ukraine minerals deal that is slated to be signed this week as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepares to travel to Washington D.C.
According to NYT, who asked six experts on the subject, there's no direct 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," NYT writes.
The publication adds that while Trump has long demanded that NATO and other allies contribute more to their own defense, the minerals agreements would be " a major escalation in his transactional approach to foreign policy."
"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," the author of the article writes.
One of the quoted experts, Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that “the new security guarantee is essentially a shakedown," adding that the US “never said to the Kuwaitis, ‘Hey, you gotta pay us for this" even though there are plenty of cases in which the United States has used its military might to protect US economic interests. Like in the first Gulf War, when the US defended Kuwait from an invasion by Iraq.
The NYT added that it is no longer clear who the Trump administration sees as friends and who 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," the NYT writes.
