LARRY KUDLOW: Trump offer was best security tripwire Ukraine could hope for

Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t seem to understand that President Donald Trump’s minerals and mining deal offer is, in fact, a giant step toward Ukraine’s security. I call it the tripwire effect.

Think of it this way. American companies will come into Ukraine and open up drilling, excavation, and mining operations for rare earth minerals, precious metals, oil and gas, and so forth. And they will be coming in to build infrastructure in various geographic locations throughout the country.

American firms will therefore be putting their boots on the ground. These are not U.S. military boots on the ground. They would be private-sector corporate boots on the ground. But they will nevertheless bring with them large-scale security.

Mining and digging for minerals is no small operation. It’s a very big deal. It’s conceivable thousands of Americans would be moving in to do all manner of jobs, be they front-office administration or engineers out in the field.

Think of it as oil patch roughnecks, like in the Permian Basin, something right out of the hit TV show Landman.

Now, I call it a ‘tripwire’ because if the Russians start rolling in tanks or start bombing these American operations, then all global hell will break loose, and Russia would then be attacking Americans.

And I don’t think they want that kind of escalation. I don’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin wants anything remotely near the idea of attacking and killing Americans.

It’s a bit like President Dwight D. Eisenhower after World War II relocating American families and businesses to Europe, alongside our post-war military bases. The old Soviet communists may have talked big, but they didn’t want to start bombing Americans, be they civilian families or military ones. That American population in post-war Europe was a Cold War ‘tripwire.’

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Zelenskyy failed to sign the minerals deal now three times. Once in Kyiv, where, according to Bessent, the Ukrainian leader was very rude in meetings. Once in Munich, after telling Bessent he would sign the deal there. And now last Friday in Washington.

It’s possible Zelenskyy is just a run-of-the-mill hothead with no manners and no respect for the Oval Office in the U.S. White House with President Trump.

When Zelenskyy blew up on Friday, this hostility to America was blatantly on display for all the world to see.

Not to mention, American voters are firmly behind President Trump on this. The latest poll from Harvard-Harris pollster Mark Penn shows 60% of Americans favor holding direct peace talks with Russia, and 72% want Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war. Only 28% support Zelenskyy’s plan, as it essentially appears now, to simply keep fighting with no end in sight.

But Trump is offering him an incredible way out.

Yes, the U.S. can recoup some of its Ukraine war expenses.

But, in the longer term, Ukraine’s entire economy will be reopened, and its assets will be monetized in ways that will be of incalculable benefit to them.

It’s like Trump is offering Zelenskyy a future, but he won’t take it. Instead, he keeps prattling on against ceasefires without security guarantees, when in fact Trump is offering him the best possible security guarantee Ukraine could hope for at this point.

But Mr. Trump and his top advisers are worried about something that’s almost inconceivable — that Zelenskyy, in reality, doesn’t actually want a peace deal, and that the brutal fighting with hundreds of thousands or even millions killed and wounded will go on for years. And that really will bring us closer to World War III.