Donald Trump’s views of wealth and power – the belief that control of real estate and minerals doth make a man – are playing out in the foreign policy of the second Trump administration. Trump wants mineral wealth that belongs to Canada, Greenland and Ukraine. Belief that minerals are the foundation of power is nothing new. Gold, silver, platinum and other minerals have been the fantasy of colonial powers for hundreds of years. Great powers have risen and fallen in the effort to expand abroad to secure this mineral wealth.

In the 21st century, the minerals that are essential to state power have changed in response to modernising electronics, aerospace, energy, communications and other industries. These minerals, too, have been subject to various efforts to control them. Cold War desiderata stimulated a new wave of mining in search of such strategic minerals as antimony, bismuth, gallium, germanium, indium, graphite, scandium, tungsten and uranium. A uranium boom for weapons and reactors led to the pursuit of nuclear material in Namibia, Kazakhstan, and the vast spaces of Canada, the western United States, Australia and elsewhere.

For Trump, this impetus is central. Trump wants Canada as the 51st state for its uranium, he wants Greenland for its proximate strategic wealth, and he desires Ukrainian minerals in exchange for the US’s past and continuing support for Ukraine’s defence against Russia.

Trump has pined for years to take Greenland from Denmark. In fact, the US has long taken advantage of Greenland’s people and ice sheet in the name of security. During the Cold War, Denmark permitted the establishment of the Thule SAC (Strategic Air Command) air force base on Greenland. Thule AFB, 1953-present, a major component of NATO defence, was the site of a never-completed underground launching pad for 600 ICBMs, which were ferried about under the ice through a maze of tunnels. To power this ‘Operation Iceworm’, the US built an ice-covered nuclear reactor that never functioned safely, and was quickly shut down. Its remnants are still a radioactive danger. The operation of Thule AFB offered a taste of what life under American control would entail for Greenland.

Further scandals followed: in 1968, a B-52 bomber caught fire, forcing the crew to bail out at 4,300 metres. After the crew escaped, the B-52 broke up, and crashed onto the sea ice. The nuclear payloads of the four hydrogen bombs carried on board the plane were dispersed over an area covering 75 square kilometres. At first, the US government resisted Danish insistence that the accident be fully cleaned up, and in any event the clean up left significant radioactivity behind.

Today, the MAGA mineralists see no problem in insisting that this territory is theirs. Ignoring international conventions and Danish sovereignty, Republicans allied to President Trump are promoting the purchase of Greenland. What does Trump himself want from Greenland? Apparently, he covets graphite, copper, nickel, zinc, gold, iron, titanium and tungsten, and perhaps oil and gas.

But Greenland’s leaders don’t want a ‘Trump Mine’ billboard on the ice sheet. The extraction of oil and natural gas is banned in Greenland, and mining development is slowed by regulations and opposition from indigenous people, who fear the potential despoliation of the landscape that it would cause. The indigenous population accordingly wants to preserve independence and the ice sheet. For its part, the government of Greenland is working with the EU directly ‘to develop sustainable value chains for mineral resources’. As a result, there is only one operational mine in Greenland.

In his pursuit of strategic minerals, Trump has mimicked his Kremlin counterparts. Within Russia, the Tsars claimed forest, fur and other resources as their patrimony. The belief that mineral resources and natural wealth should rightly be in the possession of the state persisted after the Russian Revolution and prevailed under the USSR. And the Soviets’ statist approach remains in place under Vladimir Putin, who has accelerated the Bolshevik policies of resource colonisation of the Arctic, Far North and Siberia for their tungsten, nickel, copper, platinum, and diamonds. Putin’s world view is based on fascination with natural resources as a source of national wealth, pride and military invincibility. Indeed, Putin addressed precisely these issues in his master’s thesis, completed in 1997.

For Putin, minerals have special importance in two places: the Arctic and in Ukraine. Putin is determined to recapture the Arctic regions that he believes Russia lost, militarily and economically, in the 1990s under President Yeltsin. Arctic resources produce 11 per cent of national income in Russia and 22 per cent of Russian exports. They are also responsible for 80 per cent of Russian gas, more than 90 per cent of the country’s nickel and cobalt, 60 per cent of its copper, and 96 per cent of its platinum-group metals. In addition, they also provide significant amounts of manganese, chromium, tungsten, silver, and gold.

Accordingly, Putin sees the US effort to take Greenland as a risky endeavour and worries about NATO’s Arctic presence. Nonetheless, he and his cabinet recently invited the idea of joint US-Russian Arctic development projects. Putin also expressed willingness ‘to work together with American companies’ to provide aluminum from rich Siberian reserves if the US lifts sanctions on Russia. There is a precedent here: in 2019, the office of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) worked with Rusal, the third largest aluminum producer in the world, to lift sanctions on Russian aluminium; in exchange, the company invested $200 million in Kentucky.

Strangely, President Zelensky first proposed a minerals-for-arms deal in an effort to keep the US committed to support Ukraine. According to David Uren, ‘Ukraine’s government essentially invented its mineral riches to give itself a card to deal with Trump.’ Zelensky met Trump at Trump Tower in New York in September 2024, and convinced him to pursue an agreement on Ukraine’s minerals, mentioning the potential revenue of $500 billion.

In fact, however, Ukraine does not have such extensive reserves. Existing deposits of rare earth metals in the country are of low quality and hard to mine, and the largest ones are in Russian-occupied territories. Overall, the territory of pre-2014 Ukraine holds deposits of 22 of 35 minerals classified as critical by the EU, and has reserves of 17 rare earth elements essential for high-tech applications. Most of these minerals are found in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Korovohrad, Poltava and Kharkiv regions. Russia controls approximately 20 per cent of pre-2014 Ukrainian territory, including large parts of Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia, where roughly 40 per cent of Ukraine’s metal resources and one of Ukraine’s largest lithium deposits are located, but Putin insists this land is Russia’s patrimony, and is extremely unlikely to be willing to return it to Kyiv’s control.

Further, Ukraine’s output of graphite cannot meet lithium-battery standards. Its manganese output ‘would earn little more than $200 million a year’. Finally, ‘Ukraine’s claims of critical minerals riches mainly rest on Soviet geological surveys carried out 30 to 60 years ago, not nearly recent enough to justify investment by Western financial standards.’

Trump insisted that Zelensky sign off on a promise to give Ukrainian mineral wealth to US interests, berating him in their Oval Office meeting on 28 February 2025, in front of the TV cameras. This bullying was political theatre, not a reflection of the president’s understanding of Ukraine’s wealth or the ongoing war.

Zelensky refused to sign any mineral deal in this hostile White House setting. It did not help that Trump has repeatedly lied about the fundamental facts of any deal. He claims that the US was owed $500 billion in profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for its wartime assistance. In fact, the US has given no more than $70 billion to Ukraine in military aid since 2014, and $118 billion if all amounts are included.

And yet, given the tight international links between mineral commodities and industrial demand, Washington’s interest in Ukraine’s minerals is understandable. In 2018 the United States was completely dependent on imports of at least 18 mineral commodities that are used in or for batteries, semi-conductors, capacitors, solar cells, high-tech alloys, medical and atomic research, magnets, lasers, fibre optics, and imaging, as well as many more vital products and applications. From a great power point of view, it makes sense to seek control of Ukrainian resources. For Trump, minerals are wealth, – public health, safety and environmental regulations interfere with its accumulation.

Yet the demand to control Ukraine’s rare minerals and energy assets, ‘without offering Kyiv any security guarantees in return’, is unseemly. The effort will not end the Russian war, nor will it recoup the billions of dollars in military aid. Rather, it will lead to more resources being sent abroad and increase US reliance on foreign powers.

For their part, Zelensky and the Ukrainians should also pause for thought. There are many prevailing factors that make any minerals deal problematic, including the occupation of Ukrainian land by Russia, and Russia’s destruction of large parts of Ukraine’s energy system, waterways, and dams, the lack of clarity about the nature of Ukraine’s reserves, and the futility of dealing with the Trump administration given its penchant for rapid shifts in demands. It is difficult to imagine why Ukraine would give up its mineral wealth to an unreliable ally.