Extortion Is the New Diplomacy and Ukraine Is its Latest Victim

In its simplest form, an extortionist will threaten to break your windows unless you pay him a certain amount of money each week. That’s old-timey and small pototoes, but it still exists in certain neighborhoods. A more modern, high-tech, and infinitely more profitable iteration is to threaten a cyber-attack unless quite large sums of money are transferred.

Now, that quite unexpected, but internationally effective, progression of criminality has arrived in the American presidency.

The saying is that war is simply failed diplomacy, but so is extortion.

And how wonderfully less costly.

The orange man behind the resolute desk is a master of the craft. His previously jailed (and now witness for the prosecution) lawyer was the messenger, back in his business days, offering 10% on contractor invoices. The option was a lawsuit, and what contractor can afford that, so settlement was agreed, at a fraction of what was owed.

But now the orange man is president and, along with the office, his bag-men were several cuts above mere lawyers. First choice for that dubious position was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who first met with Mr. Zelensky to discuss the deal and, when that wasn’t sufficiently intimidating, Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, threw a metaphoric rock through Zelensky’s front window.

The note attached to the rock was eerily similar to that thrown at Greenland.

While dysprosium, neodymium and cerium may not be common to the less chemically educated (such as myself), they are among a group of 17 ‘rare earth metals,’ most of them heavy, that are conveniently abundant in both Ukraine and Greenland.

They’re also very well known to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and any other of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs standing next to the president at his inauguration. They are all what are called ‘strategic metals,’ essential for those industries developing computers, batteries, and cutting-edge energy technology. Of equal enchantment to the tech-bros, China has 44% of the world’s known resources, so they are both scarce and damnably expensive.

If you thought government was about politics, you’re a number of decades behind what’s hot and what’s not.

Tech, baby, it’s a tech world now. Orange man’s extortion note was both brief and to the point: Trump wants Ukraine’s precious metals, and it wants them ‘forever,’ without any guarantees for military support.

In fact, the orange man demands that any further expenses for future military support be paid back $2 for every $1 expended. That makes the 1918 punitive armistice against Germany look generous. Especially for a nation as destroyed as Ukraine.

As an additional rock through the window, there’s Starlink.

U.S. could cut Ukraine’s access to Starlink internet services over minerals extertion, say sources. Starlink, an Elon Musk satellite communication device, is critical to Ukraine§s war effort. Ah yes, there’s the Musketeer, dipping his political toe and influence into government contracts once again.

Ukraine on Saturday was seriously considering a revised American proposal for its vast natural resources that contains virtually the same provisions that Kyiv previously rejected as too onerous, according to Ukrainian officials and a draft of the deal. In fact, some of the terms appear even tougher than in a previous draft. The latest proposal comes after a week in which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine resisted signing the earlier version in a public dispute with President Trump.

Speaking in the Oval Office later Friday, Trump said, “We’re going to either sign a deal, or there’s going to be a lot of problems with them.”

And so, the wheels for a perfect extortion have been carefully set in motion:

· An early hour-long Trump phone call with Putin, discussing the great histories of both the U.S. and Russia, as well as their brilliant future together,

· A U.S. and Russian meeting in Saudi to discuss the terms of a Ukraine cease-fire (no Ukrainians or NATO participants, please),

· The unspoken threat of the U.S. leaving NATO,

· America’s usurious demands upon Ukraine for both natural resources and onward financial/military aid,

· The final threat of loss of access to Starlink, and

· No actual assurance of ongoing American strategic guarantees over Ukrainian independence.

It takes America’s and the world’s breath away to witness the orange man’s first deal of his newly born, and not yet weaned, second term.