Washington Fantasyland - The Prime Minister of Mississippi Comes to Visit.
Rare Earths Are Very Rare - At Least in Ukraine.
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The air in Washington is more than usually clouded with fantasy this week, much of it generated by reports of a supposed treasure trove of rare earth and other priceless minerals buried in the soil of Ukraine. Excited by the notion, Donald Trump has claimed an outsize share in return for continued U.S. support of the Kyiv regime, and the media have dutifully accepted his claims as fact. Reporters scrambled to unearth details of negotiations on sharing the bonanza, along with outraged denunciation of Trump’s “protection racket” diplomacy.
But there was no there there.
As Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas pungently explained, “What Ukraine has is scorched earth; what it doesn’t have is rare earths.” This pertinent fact should not be a secret. Blas’s source is the U.S. Geological Survey which helpfully publishes a list of countries that do have the relevant exotic materials deemed vital for a modern economy. China holds the lion’s share, followed by Vietnam, Brazil and a host of others. Ukraine doesn’t rate a mention. As Blas put it “The US Geological Survey, an authority on the matter, doesn’t list the country as holding any reserves. Neither does any other database commonly used in the mining business.”
This world of make-believe was a fitting venue for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who arrived in Washington intent on deflecting Trump from impose crippling tariffs on British goods and equally keen to deflect Trump’s diplomatic outreach to Vladimir Putin, obviously the only way to end the ongoing slaughter in Ukraine. Starmer doesn’t like that idea at all. Like other bellicose European leaders such as Emmanuel Macron, his most fervent desire is to keep the war going. Thus, while Trump spoke hopefully of negotiating a ceasefire with Putin, Starmer quickly said that any agreement should not “reward the aggressor,” and should “stop Putin coming back for more.” In other words, Putin, in Starmer’s view, should have no incentive to negotiate in the first place.
It Get’s Worse
Moving from the obdurate to the delusional, Starmer pledged to put “boots on the ground and planes in the air” in the event of a ceasefire, which, he suggested, could have an American “backstop.” Trump would have none of it, larding his rejection with a vague reference to Britain’s “great military.”
Any consideration of Britain’s place as an economic power, let alone a military one, should come with the proviso that the British economy, as calculated by GDP, ranks poorer than all but the most indigent American states, and only just ahead of the poorest, Mississippi. Subtracting London’s contribution, it falls below even the Magnolia State, and is likely headed nowhere but down.
In that light, Starmer’s recent pledge to jack up British defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP might actually come true. The linkage of GDP percentages to military capability is inherently ludicrous. For example, every time a Starbucks outlet closes, the U.S. GDP contracts by some fractional amount, with a consequent rise in the percentage of GDP consumed by defense spending, and vice versa. Given Britain’s diminishing economic prospects, especially if Trump inflicts tariffs on its few remaining export industries, Starmer’s promise can easily be met, and probably exceeded. By this yardstick, he may soon be the golden boy of NATO (although the faltering European economies, may well provide stiff competition).
However much Britain’s defense spending increases from its current level of £53.9 billion ($68.3bn), the results are likely to be disappointing. In terms of waste, technical deficiencies, and overall poor planning, Britain’s ministry of defense makes its U.S. counterpart appear a paragon of excellence. This sorry state of affairs is both augmented and obscured by the near total abscence of any tradition of informed criticism in the British press or among politicians. One shining exception came in the form of a withering report by the House of Commons Defense Commitee in 2021. Although focussed on the lamentable failures of armored vehicle developent programs, the committee delivered this overall conclusion:
“This report reveals a woeful story of bureaucratic procrastination, military indecision, financial mismanagement and general ineptitude, which have continually bedevilled attempts to properly re-equip the British Army over the last two decades. Even on the MoD’s own current plans…we are still some four years away from even being able to field a “warfighting division”, which, itself, would now be hopelessly under-equipped and denuded of even a third combat brigade.”