Peter Rhodes on payback for America, dancing with chainsaws and the Peter Pan guide to fertility
So it's all about the money, is it? We all thought the US was giving Ukraine 500 billion dollars to fight the Russians simply because it was The Right Thing. Now, Washington is demanding Ukraine's precious minerals as payback.
This stirs a very old British suspicion that while the Americans tend to be late in joining wars, they are usually early in sending the bill. As a Home Guard squaddie in Dad's Army (BBC) put it: “The only thing the Yanks ever charged was ten per cent interest on the money they lent us.”
And yet salvation comes in many forms. If Ukraine becomes an enormous rare-metals quarry for America, that will presumably mean American personnel, machinery and finance on Ukrainian soil. And that in turn may make Russia think twice about invading again. This theory presupposes, of course, the Trump project is the result of much deep thinking by great brains. And how do we square that with Elon Musk tangoing with his chainsaw?
