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minerals
The Military Madman of Mar-a-Lago
For Donald Trump, foreign policy is dedicated not to peace, but first of all to secure access to mineral and petroleum resources, and second to make the world understand his dealmaking prowess.
Mar 06, 2026
The murderous madman from Mar-a-Lago, who claims himself worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, has unleashed yet another war, this one across the Mideast. President Donald Trump has demonstrated again and again the absence of any consistent foreign policy, except a perfunctory willingness to unleash military might. Since returning to office last year Trump has attacked Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela, and Iran twice, and he has threatened “friendly” takeovers of Denmark (Greenland) and Cuba.
For Trump, foreign policy is dedicated not to peace, but first of all to secure access to mineral and petroleum resources, and second to make the world understand his dealmaking prowess. But even by mercenary standards, he falls short. His efforts to secure “peace” in Africa, the Caucasus, the Mideast, and Ukraine reveal a doddering dictator dedicated only to securing access to strategic resources, not at all a statesman interested in peace. In fact, Trump’s diplomatic efforts reflect a transactional approach to accumulate wealth through minerals, oil, and natural gas for himself and his extended family, and secondarily to US companies.
Trump claims to have ended eight wars. None of his touted agreements have actually ended a war. The so-called “Washington Accords” between Congo and Rwanda in December 2025—in the name of peace—actually aims at a strategic partnership between the US and Congo that gives American companies priority access to the country’s significant reserves of strategic cobalt, copper and lithium. The accords failed to end the fighting.
Trump insists his efforts alone ended the decades-long war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But an August 2025 agreement has not been ratified or implemented, nor was the agreement new, nor American-brokered, but the product of bilateral negotiations between Baku and Yerevan. The agreement instead mentions a Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) connectivity project to be built solely by American companies with railways, communication networks, and pipelines for oil and gas. (It does not help to win peace in the Caucasus that the intellectually impaired Trump insists that Azerbaijan is Albania.)
Trump promised an end to the war in Ukraine on day one of his second term. He obviously has not delivered, and he has no interest in ending the war. Nor does Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump insists that Ukraine give in to Russian territorial demands. In exchange for US access to Ukrainian mineral resources and its nuclear power stations, Trump says he will guarantee the peace that follows. But the Trump “peace” deal requires nothing from Russia in return. To dazzle Trump, Russia cleverly promised the US $12 trillion in economic deals involving fuels and minerals should a treaty be signed. But this is a Kremlin ploy given that the promised amount is six times Russia’s GDP. Putin’s representatives deftly deployed dollar signs to excite Trump’s mineral fantasies.
Granted, Trump supported an Israeli-Palestine ceasefire in September 2025, but it, too reflects his base acquisitive interests. Trump said of the deal, in a fit of self-adulation, “All I've done all my life is deals. The greatest deals just sort of happen… And maybe this is going to be the greatest deal of them all.” In fact, the “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” has not led to peace or demilitarization. It ultimately endorses a US takeover of the Gaza Strip, the expulsion of all Palestinians, and the construction of a Gaza Mideast Riviera, replete with Trump skyscrapers and glass-front condominiums for the wealthy.
Not content with the halting pursuit of mineral rights and property deals in Africa, Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East, Trump determined to secure petroleum in South America. In January 2026 Trump ordered the bombing of Venezuela to remove its leadership and bring its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife to the US for prosecution. Trump celebrated the invasion as an end to the flooding of the US with fentanyl by violent Venezuelan “narco-terrorists.” But this was a typical Trump lie: The drug comes from Mexico and China, and Trump’s real interest was in ownership of Venezuelan oil reserves which at one time were controlled by US companies. Those companies remain skeptical today of any investment to rebuild the industry. And so, president promised that the US is going to "run" Venezuela "until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”
The same pattern of lies, ignorance, and violence came to a head in Iran. If Trump was truly interested in peace, he would not have unilaterally abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (2016) with Iran that had secured its agreement not to build nuclear weapons and permitted onsite inspections of its facilities. Trump withdrew from the accord in 2018 simply because it was an accomplishment of Barrack Obama.
Trump wanted war with Iran, no matter the consequences. As a first step, in June 2025, the US and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, with Trump pompously—and falsely—proclaiming their obliteration. And even as US and Iranian negotiators were close to a new deal in Oman in this weekend, in which Iran had agreed again to full verification of sites and never to build nuclear weapons, Trump started a second war with Israel’s help. Pursuing regime change against common sense and his advisers’ informed assessments, he ordered missiles to kill Iranian leadership in the gratuitously named mission “Operation Epic Fury.” And now the US is stuck in a Trumpian world of unending violence that is spreading from Iran to Israel to Bahrain to US bases in what many observers are now calling “Operation Epstein Fury”—a war to divert attention from Trump’s pedophile scandal at home.
So confident about this war are the president and his advisers that they sat about, smirking, in his Mar-o-Lago “situation room” to gloat over this most recent war, with maps and photos, likely of military secrets, visible on the wall, not far from the bathroom in which Trump kept stolen classified documents. What’s up next for the decrepit, violent, and ineffective leader? Sending federal troops wearing body armor and armed with chemical weapons and M-4 carbines into US cities to subjugate dangerous blue states?
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The Saga of Donald the Orange: Would-Be Conqueror of Greenland
For Donald the Orange of Florida the attraction of Greenland is driven by obsession with land mass, strategic minerals, and Nobel prizes.
Jan 20, 2026
According to the Saga of Eirik the Red , from the year 1200, the Norse explorer who established homesteads on the island, Eirik, called the place Greenland, "Because,” he said, “men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name.”
For Donald the Orange of Florida the attraction of Greenland is not its good name, but obsession with land mass, strategic minerals, and Nobel prizes. Donald the Orange has threatened to annex Greenland from Denmark by force, if need be, “Whether they like it or not.” Raising the specter of the Norse god Loki the Trickster, he continued, “I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”
President Donald Trump doesn’t know that Greenland, the world’s largest island at over 2 million square kilometers, is covered almost entirely by a massive ice sheet up to 3 kilometers thick. Its magnificent, unique fjords include Ilulissat, a UNESCO World Heritage site. He cares less that Greenland, territory of Denmark, has home rule by Inuit, of whom roughly 56,000 inhabit the land. And he has no concern that its ice sheet has been shrinking for 29 years. He wants mineral wealth.
Minerals and Trump
Donald the Orange’s involvement in disputes in Africa, Ukraine, Venezuela, and in his efforts to annex Greenland, indicate his belief that control of minerals and fossil fuels are critical to the US superiority in world affairs. Conquest of Greenland will enable the US to escape reliance on China which controls, mines, or processes many of the worlds strategic miners. Greenland has been “underexplored and is geologically very favorable," according to an economic geologist at Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
The Kalaallit and Danes do not need Trumps’s threats or his contaminated garbage.
A 2023 European Commission survey showed that 25 of the 34 minerals classified as "critical raw materials" are found in Greenland. They include rare earth elements used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, advanced electronics, and military equipment. There is great potential to develop zinc, copper, and nickel deposits, although oil and natural gas extraction are banned for environmental reasons. But mining projects would encounter bureaucratic hurdles as well as opposition from Indigenous communities. Hence annexation is Donald the Orange’s preferred path.
Donald the Orange and the Viking Myth
The Vikings had treaties to expand trade networks and influence across the Arctic. Donald the Orange rejects trade for tariffs and relies on bloviating threats that make him the consummate dealmaker. Trump first demanded Greenland as a gift; next floated the idea of purchasing it as "an absolute necessity”; and now is committed to military force to plunder its fish, gold, graphite, and zinc from Inuit people. Donald the Orange ultimately sees Greenland as an outpost of his bold leadership to keep the Russian and Chinese pillagers at bay.
Trump ignores universal European opposition to his plans. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that any attack by the US would destroy NATO. European NATO leaders issued a joint statement that "Greenland belongs to its people.” They pointed out that “the United States is an essential partner in this endeavor, as a NATO ally and through the defense agreement between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States of 1951.”
But Donald the Orange rejects contemporary diplomatic maneuvers for a Viking, 19th-century view of international relations where power derives from control of resources. He ties this view to renewal of the outdated Monroe Doctrine (1823) to oppose European influence in the Western Hemisphere. He laughingly calls this policy the Donroe Doctrine.
Seeing landmass as strategic in an age of nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers reveals only ignorance of modern military technologies. And annexing Greenland would lead to rippling strategic catastrophes. It would mean that a NATO member state had just invaded another member state. It would empower Russia to ignore NATO entirely and push beyond Ukraine into Poland and the Baltic states. Donald the Orange is helping Vlad the Impaler.
The US Legacy of Nuclear Greenland
Sadly, there is a long history of US military meddling in Greenland. During the Cold War, the US sought to transform the ice sheet into a nuclear weapon. There were two major programs: a nuclear bomber base at Pittufik (formerly Thule) and a nuclear-powered ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) network built under the ice sheet at Camp Century. Pituffik opened in 1951 after Denmark became of founding member of NATO. A major component of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and NATO's defense system, Putuffik supported nuclear bombers so that the US was always prepared to jet over the North Pole to bomb the USSR. Its construction forced the expulsion of Inuit from the region.
Donald the Orange is determined in conquest. Donald the Orange needs even more tribute. Perhaps he will threaten to annex Norway to control its NOK $2 trillion trust fund.
An even more audacious project was the never-completed “Project Iceworm” at Camp Century to move 600 ICBMs missiles undetectable by Moscow through a maze of ice tunnels spread over thousands of square kilometers. A 330-ton reactor was trekked in on sleds from Thule to power the station. Neither the missile maze nor the reactor worked as intended. The reactor exposed soldiers to high levels of radiation, and it leaked radioisotopes into the surroundings.
The US also dropped a nuclear bomb on Greenland in January 1968 when a B-52 bomber with four hydrogen bombs caught on fire, destroying the bomber’s electrical power grid; the crew bailed out at 4,300 meters; and the pilotless B52 crashed. The crash spread radioactivity over a 75 square kilometer area. One bomb was never found. The US refused to clean up the mess, but Denmark insisted upon careful removal of the debris in “Project Crested Ice.” US soldiers gathered and shipped to the US 163 drums of dangerous detritus, 14 engine containers, and 11 large fuel tanks, and 900 95 M3 tanks filled with ice and snow, leaving behind contaminated equipment, vehicles, mukluks, and clothing that became part of a nuclear cemetery.
Global Warming and Donald the Orange
The Kalaallit and Danes do not need Trumps’s threats or his contaminated garbage. Already scores of military Greenland sites have accumulated huge quantities of crates and barrels filled with tainted soil, PCBs, heavy metals, diesel oil, and radioactive waste. And more waste will appear. Donald the Orange and his advisers contribute to global warming through their devotion to fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the melting Greenland ice sheet will reveal Camp Century by 2090, when 200,000 liters of radioactive waste and other toxic materials will be released.
Donald the Orange is determined in conquest. Donald the Orange needs even more tribute. Perhaps he will threaten to annex Norway to control its NOK $2 trillion trust fund. Having occupied Oslo, he can claim as many Nobel Peace prizes as he wishes.
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The Peace Deal That Wasn’t
Trump’s Congo-Rwanda Peace Accord is an affront to Congolese human rights and sovereignty.
Aug 03, 2025
After the signing of the so-called peace agreement between Rwanda and Congo on June 27, U.S. President Donald Trump took a victory lap. “This is a Great Day for Africa and, quite frankly, a Great Day for the World! I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this... but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!” he posted. The agreement, heralded as a breakthrough ending more than three decades of violence in Congo, was quickly praised by powerful institutions in the West, including the United Nations and the European Union.
There’s no question that peace in Congo is a desperately needed goal. Since 1996, war in the country has killed nearly 6 million people and displaced over 7 million. More than 21 million require humanitarian assistance, and in 2023 alone, the U.N. recorded over 133,000 cases of sexual violence, almost certainly a significant undercount.
However, while world leaders and celebratory headlines applaud the deal, violence continues to rage in the eastern Congo. The deal will not end this suffering; instead, it prioritizes Western private interests over peace, justice, and dignity for the Congolese people, serving as a blueprint for resource extraction and continued violence in the country rather than a true diplomatic success.
The deal, while ostensibly aimed at ending hostilities, places a heavy emphasis on mineral exploitation, leading Congolese civil society to question its true purpose. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege has denounced it for “legitimizing the plundering of Congolese natural resources,” a concern supported by the agreement’s inclusion of a clause committing signatories to “launch and/or expand cooperation on… formalized end-to-end mineral value chains… with the U.S. government and U.S. investors.” Upon the release of the Declaration of Principles that laid the deal’s foundations, the International Crisis Group noted that the deal reads “partly like a framework for ending a conflict and partly like a commercial memorandum.”
The False Promise of Peace
It is highly unlikely that the deal will bring a just and lasting peace to Congo. Though a potential cease-fire was announced between the Congo government and M23, the conflict’s largest rebel group, experts say that M23 has already broken the agreement while serious implementation challenges remain. M23 has left withdrawal—and, thus, a true and lasting end to the conflict—out of the question, telling reporters they “will not retreat, not even by one meter.” Meanwhile, over 100 other armed groups continue to fight in the east. On July 23, the U.N. condemned three recent deadly attacks by groups not party to the agreement.
More troublingly, the deal grants Rwanda a green light to continue looting Congolese resources, furthering a central driver of the conflict. By backing M23, Rwanda has taken control of Congolese mines, and committed widespread human rights abuses. Up to 90% of its coltan exports are believed to be illicitly smuggled from eastern Congo, funding armed groups. The accord, which invites Rwanda into a “regional economic integration framework,” legitimizes this theft and proxy warfare.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame doesn’t seem ready to scale back this influence. Just days after the agreement was signed, he cast doubt on the peace process, telling reporters, “If the side that we are working with plays tricks... then we deal with the problem like we have been dealing with it.”
Who Does the Deal Really Benefit?
Today, the Congolese people endure violence not only from armed conflict but also from systemic exploitation, through forced labor, environmental destruction, and land seizures. The scramble for Congo’s mineral wealth has forced tens of thousands of children into dangerous mines, polluted and devastated ecosystems, and displaced entire communities from their homes.
A recent policy brief by the Oakland Institute lays bare how, through handing over Congolese mineral wealth to a web of U.S.-aligned corporate actors and billionaire investors, Trump’s peace deal will deepen the ravages of the country’s mining industry, leaving the Congolese people to pay the price.
The list of the deal’s likely beneficiaries is a veritable who’s-who of Trump-linked billionaires: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz, among others. Also on it are mining giants like Ivanhoe Mines, Rio Tinto, and Glencore.
The accord threatens to entrench this cyclical poverty and violence in service of enriching behemoth mining firms and Trump’s billionaire friends.
The track records of these companies undermine any claim that Trump’s deal is about peace for the Congolese people. Ivanhoe Mines’s cochair Robert Friedland once ran Galactic Resources, responsible for one of the worst mining-related environmental disasters in U.S. history. He has already been exposed for harmfully evicting Congolese families to expand his new operations in the Congo. Rio Tinto, notorious for sparking a civil war in Papua New Guinea and for destroying a 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal site in Australia, is now eyeing Congo’s Manono Lithium Deposit. Glencore has been fined over $1 billion for abuses in its African mines and maintains illicit financial ties to sanctioned Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler. Both Ivanhoe and Rio Tinto are reportedly set to join a forthcoming minerals agreement tied directly to the deal’s economy-driven clauses.
Lacking the infrastructure to process its own resources, Congo remains trapped in a cycle where foreign actors siphon off its $24 trillion in mineral wealth while its citizens remain among the poorest in the world. Compounding that systemic inequality, both corporate and artisanal mines enact severe human rights abuses and environmental devastation on the Congolese people, injustices that the agreement appears likely to bolster as it opens the door to firms perpetrating them against communities around the globe. In doing so, the accord threatens to entrench this cyclical poverty and violence in service of enriching behemoth mining firms and Trump’s billionaire friends.
Despite what he may think, or wish, Donald Trump deserves no applause for this “peace agreement” because the agreement itself is misnamed. Its focus has never been peace, but rather profit, and his attempt to launder it into something more benevolent is transparently disingenuous.
Without a radical shift, Trump’s deal will likely achieve exactly what it was intended for, funneling billions to already wealthy oligarchs and multinational corporations while sidelining the communities forced to live with its consequences.
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