Is Trump’s Peace Plan a Bluff Plan or a Betrayal Plan?
People don’t always negotiate in the way that we think they do. We assume that negotiation is a straightforward affair. But it’s not and never has been. It’s a game of dominance, deception, and, above all, leverage. And Donald Trump — whether you love him or hate him — understands that game. He often doesn’t win it, but he plays it.
Consider his pattern with Mexico and Canada. First, create chaos. Disrupt the board. Introduce a nonsensical proposition — something unworkable, something outrageous, something that stokes outrage and forces the other side to react emotionally. Then, wait. Watch as people scramble, calculate, and counteract. And when the dust settles, when the terms of the debate have shifted entirely, move in for the real prize. Of course with Mexico/Canada he simply got what Biden had already got.
But, apply that to Ukraine. Trump’s betrayal plan, a so-called “peace” plan, at first glance appears to be a betrayal of Kyiv. It sounds absurd, designed to force them into an impossible position. But what if that’s not the real game? What if the real game is to drive up the perceived price of peace for Ukraine — not for the sake of peace itself, but for economic and strategic leverage?
Rare earths. Ukraine has them, and the US needs them. The war has already forced new resource calculations. What if Trump’s bluster is a gambit to push Ukraine to trade those critical minerals on terms more favourable to the U.S. rather than to China, or even Europe? He did change to this plan at the last minute, even torpedoing Hegseth. So, what if his plan isn’t about ending the war at all, but about securing a bigger piece of the post-war economy, using his betrayal plan to pump the volume of rare earths the US can get out of it?
We can’t assume that the first story we’re told is the real one. We need to look past the outrage, past the distraction. Because in Trump’s world, what seems irrational is just a distraction. It is the absurd, shocking, disgusting first gambit which causes us a problem. Let’s see how it unfolds.
#Ukraine #Trump #RareEarths #PeacePlan
