Image by Alexander Mills.
The war in Ukraine may or may not be winding down with ongoing US/Russian negotiations, but this leads to a key question: what was the war really about in the first place? We were told by the US government (albeit without any documentary evidence) that Russian President Putin was on a power-hungry “unprovoked” campaign to take over much of Central Europe, like Hitler tried to do. Putin would thereby restore the former Soviet Union’s territory, putting the sovereignty of Ukraine and much of Europe at risk. On the other hand, numerous political historians and even former American officials cite a different cause: that Russia was indeed provoked by the clearly stated plans and actions to expand NATO up to the Russian border and emplace nuclear weapons there within a short striking distance of Moscow, putting Russia’s safety at stake.
But both viewpoints leave out an important feature of the war: the environmental resource feature. The war is a contention between the corporate oligarchs of both the US and Russia to control Ukraine’s vast natural resources. With Trump’s recent Oval Office made-for-TV show to bully Zelensky into an agreement that allows mineral extraction in order for private corporations to “cash in” on Ukrainian rare-earth deposits, we might ask: is the corporate zeal to seize rare earths just one aspect of a squabble over post-war spoils, or is it a root cause of the war from the beginning (and even before the beginning)? Activists would be advised to see environmental desecration as both a cause of war and an obvious outcome of war.
Ukraine holds huge deposits of critical elements and minerals. In an effort to attract investment and presumably military support from the West, the Ukrainian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources and Ukrainian Geological Survey have published a report after the Russian invasion which claims that Ukraine has deposits of 22 of the 50 materials the U.S. has identified as critical and declares that: “Ukraine holds very competitive positions in five key ones: graphite, lithium, titanium, beryllium and uranium”.
This wealth is not new news. Even before the Russian invasion in February, 2022, a mainstream European business magazine in July, 2021 (before the Russian invasion of Ukraine) opens as follows: “Kyiv [the capital of Ukraine] will be invited on Tuesday (13 July) to join EU industrial alliances on batteries and raw materials, with a view to develop an entire value chain of the extraction, refining and recycling of minerals in Ukraine to supply the EU market for electric cars and digital equipment.”
Ukraine is rich in rare-earth minerals, essential in digital electronic devices and displays. The bulk of rare earth mineral presently comes from China and Russia, which are now targeted as “adversaries” in a future economics-motivated shooting war.
Until recently, the importance of rare earth minerals generally has been underplayed in the “mainstream” media. Instead, more emotive political terms like “self-determination” and “existential threat” and “freedom and democracy”, devoid of explicit economic interests, have been most frequently deployed. But even months ago, some US politicians did refer to the rare earths in a starkly positive light as an actual motive to continue the war. For example, here is what Sen. Lindsay Graham has said in November, 2024 in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News:
“Ukraine is still standing. This war is about money. People don’t talk much about it but you know the richest country in all of Europe for Rare Earth minerals is Ukraine. Two to seven trillion dollars worth of minerals that are Rare Earth minerals, very relevant to the 21st century. Ukraine’s ready to do a deal with us, not the Russians, so it’s in our interest to make sure that Russia doesn’t take over the place. It’s the Bread Basket of really the developing World. 50% all the food going to Africa comes out of Ukraine. We can make money and have a economic relationship with Ukraine that’d be very beneficial to us with peace. So Donald Trump’s going to do deal to get our money back to enrich ourselves with Rare Earth minerals, a good deal for Ukraine and us, and he’s going to bring peace and Biden’s been a disaster when it comes to containing bad guys.” (Thanks to Sen. Graham for supplying the title of this article.)
Apart from rare-earth metals, Ukraine is extremely rich in natural resources for energy (oil, gas, coal, and uranium) and other metal and non-metal minerals, as well as agriculture. But much of this natural wealth is in territories now under Russian control, which might explain why the West had been so keen to regain all of the invaded territory, and why Russia has been keen to hold it. And of course, Ukraine also has a great geographical position with year-round ocean access ports on the Black Sea, facilitating export to foreign markets.
A Ukrainian government website, working along with Ukrainian business interests, tries to pull in foreign investors to the natural wealth with the following leading statement: “Ukraine has extremely rich and complementary mineral resources in high concentrations and close proximity to each other. The country has abundant reserves of coal, iron ore, natural gas, manganese, salt, oil, graphite, sulfur, kaolin, titanium, nickel, magnesium, timber, and mercury.”
In a particularly brazen pro-corporate pitch, Ukraine’s Geological Survey report boasts that “To facilitate large-scale critical raw materials development, Ukraine streamlines regulatory approvals” (italics emphasis added). Environmental rules in the US and in Europe are intended to benefit the health of local populations, but they can be a real hassle to extractive industries. The appeal of environmental rule evasion in Ukraine was even cited by Trump himself in his contentious press conference with Zelensky on Feb. 28 (although he consistently misidentifies rare earth as “raw” earth):
“As you know, our country doesn’t have much raw earth. We have a lot of oil and gas but we don’t have a lot of the raw earth. And what we do have is protected by the environmentalists, but that could be unprotected. But it’s still not very much. They [Ukraine] have among the best in the world in terms of raw earth” (italics emphasis added).
Essentially, Trump is saying that rare earth mineral resources are not that rare. The goal is to extract them in places with little environmental oversight.
Ukraine is hoping to offer rare earth elements, essential for many kinds of technology, but it insists it must be traded only in exchange for continued military aid. The offer is appealing to right-wing opinion-makers such as columnist and CIA apologist Marc Thiesson of the Washington Post, who frames it all as part of a struggle against Russia and China:
“One of the main reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine (aside from his delusional historical fantasies about how Ukrainians and Russians are ‘one people’) was to seize these natural resources, which are valued at an estimated $26 trillion…”.
Of course, Thiesson does not mention that this “main reason” works the other way too: the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO would provide the West a great opportunity to seize those natural resources. Russia has consistently opposed that incorporation for decades, and it considered the West’s plans for Ukrainian NATO membership to be a deliberate military provocation, which it arguably was. Even Trump has admitted, “As far as NATO is concerned, from many years before President Putin, I will tell you that I’ve heard that Russia would never accept that. So that’s the way it is, and I think that’s the way it’s going to have to be.”
The attraction of mining interests and their governments to rare earth deposits is not limited to Ukraine. Greenland has a rich supply of rare earths and other valuable minerals. This fact led Trump to declare that taking over Greenland is in our “economic” interest. Who is “our”? Among the people most interested in Greenland is Trump’s commerce secretary nominee and Wall Street investment banker Howard Lutnick. Mr. Lutnick is the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, which has a financial stake in the island’s mining prospects through an investment in a company called Critical Metals Corp. Critical Metals plans to start the mining process as soon as 2026, according to company executives. Lutnick says he promises to divest his personal interest.
The underlying story is the same concerning the proposed (but still unlikely) annexation of Canada. Canada’s Premier Justin Trudeau was caught by an accidentally “hot mic” saying, “I suggest that not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state.”
We are told repeatedly – and we are supposed to believe – (1) that Putin is a madman intent on taking over all of eastern and central Europe to restore the Soviet sphere, and (2) that the US opposes any countries invading other countries (!) and merely strives to protect democracy and stability. This line is reminiscent of the State Dept. propaganda during the Vietnam War: that China was out to invade all of SE Asia nations, which would “fall like a row of dominoes” unless we blocked them in S. Vietnam. In both the cases of Ukraine and Vietnam, that statement has been very effective in rousing up public support for a war, but it is chanted with very little actual factual backing. What we are NOT supposed to believe is that, behind many imperial wars, lurks an international competition among capitalist oligarchs for valuable natural resources.
One might argue that the cost of these wars far exceeds the value of the ore to be mined. But this view is too simplistic because it ignores the socioeconomic class structure of US society. Ordinary working taxpayers in the US are the ones who do the paying (and sometimes dying) for the wars, with their tax money going to the pockets of corporate military industrial contractors. And of course, ownership, control, and profits from the mining operations will accrue – not to the US taxpayers – but directly to corporate mining companies. So which class gains and which class loses in an imperial war are entirely different classes.
US government efforts to separate Ukraine from the USSR (of which Ukraine was a founding member) and later from Russia have a long history. Even as early in the Cold War as 1949, the CIA air-dropped 85 agents into Ukraine to acquire intelligence to covertly support nationalist (and often fascist) movements that, it was hoped, would trigger a Soviet breakup. Zbigniew Brzezinski (Pres. Carter’s Secretary of State and prominent US Cold Warrior theoretician), in his famous book “The Grand Chessboard” (1997), emphasized over and over the geostrategic centrality of Ukraine “with its 52 million people and major resources as well as its access to the Black Sea”. The economic value of Ukraine was recognized, by both the US/NATO and by Russia. Brzezinski in his book also emphasized how NATO dominance in Ukraine would be an unacceptable provocation to Russia, decades before Russia’s “unprovoked” attack in 2022.
So why does a settlement in Ukraine now appear more likely of late, as the US under Trump appears to be backing away from supplying Ukraine militarily and financially, reversing the prior Biden policy? Is Biden a warmonger but Trump a peacemaker? No, both are pro-capitalist warmongers acting in the interests of their wealthiest backers. The switch of policy toward end-stage negotiation is simply a matter of “facts on the ground”. Russia has successfully invaded eastern Ukraine (the section with a largely ethnic Russian population) and is able to deploy a large military to hold it. US/NATO rulers had always recognized this inherent Russian military superiority but had hoped that strict economic sanctions would weaken Russia. Unfortunately for US/NATO, that hope did not work out at all; the Russian economy is growing, saved by its trade within the rapidly growing “BRICS” economic consortium of non-Western European, non-North American nations . In this escalating war of attrition, the US/Ukraine already started launching advanced ballistic missiles into Russia. The next escalatory step by either side could easily go nuclear. Biden and Blinken were willing to play nuclear chicken; Trump is not so willing, at least not over Ukraine.
But still, why is there a difference in Ukraine policy between Trump and Biden, if they are both pro-corporate puppets? This is because western corporate networks that essentially buy government policy are not monolithic; different networks have some overlapping interests but also some very divergent ones. One split appears to be whether the circle of Russian oligarchs are included vs. excluded in the corporate array of holdings. Another split follows along the global (“globalist”) vs. national (“America first”) investments divide. The different networks then push different politicians and governmental policies according to which policies will directly benefit themselves at the expense of the others. This clash of interests is usually hidden, played out only in secret meetings and corporate boardrooms and lobbyist bribery. But these days, some of the clashes have broken out into the public. For example, in the case of Biden, some of his wealthy backers and family members allegedly were deeply invested in Ukraine government-connected energy exploration holding corporations (for example, Burisma). Trump allegedly appears to have owed a debt to the Russian oligarch networks which launder money through his real estate towers and which have bailed him out of bankruptcy when his New Jersey casinos failed.
The underlying lesson here is that questions of war and peace are integrally related to questions of environmental extraction and destruction. It is a two-way street. Environmental desecration both results from war and causes war. Such matters go far beyond the usual media focus about smart vs. stupid or stable vs. defective personalities of the leaders. The problem is systemic. The pumping heart of the two-way street is corporate capitalism, which by its fundamental nature, is “all about money”.
Source: Counter Punch
