经济学人：美国给乌克兰的惩罚性协议

作者：经济学人          来源：一天一篇外刊

 THE AMERICAN demand was brutal. President Volodymyr Zelensky had hoped to present his offer to give America access to Ukraine’s rare minerals directly to Donald Trump. When America’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, turned up in Kyiv a few days ahead of this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, Mr Zelensky then hoped he’d be talking about continued financial support. Instead, the Ukrainian president unexpectedly found himself presented with a memorandum. The proposal demanded his country’s mineral wealth in its entirety. Mr Zelensky had “an hour” to agree, according to three sources with knowledge of the exchange.

美国提出的要求极为严苛。乌克兰总统泽连斯基原本打算将一项提议（即允许美国开采乌克兰的稀有矿产资源）直接提交给前美国总统特朗普。然而，就在几天前，美国财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent,）匆匆赶往基辅，泽连斯基本期望借此机会就进一步提供财政支持的问题与他进行深入探讨。但出乎意料的是，泽连斯基收到了一份备忘录，这份备忘录竟要求乌克兰完全出让其矿产资源。据三位知情人士透露，美国竟要求泽连斯基在“一个小时”内做出决定。

Unaccustomed to such blunt treatment, the Ukrainian president declined, and pushed the discussion to the Munich conference. There, the Americans pressed once more, demanding Ukraine pledge “$500bn worth” of natural resources as a back payment for military aid supposedly already delivered. By the end of Saturday, February 15th, the Ukrainian team had negotiated a stay of execution, and agreed to start a process of negotiation. At a press huddle in Munich, Mr Zelensky cautioned that the American proposal contained none of the security guarantees that Ukraine needs. “We can think about how to divide resources once security guarantees are clear,” he said.

对于美国如此直截了当的态度，乌克兰总统泽连斯基表达了不满，并决定将相关讨论暂时搁置，直至慕尼黑会议召开。在会议上，美方再次施压，要求乌克兰承诺将价值高达5000亿美元的自然资源作为对既有军事援助的补偿。到2月15日星期六会议结束时，乌克兰代表团争取到了延期执行的缓冲期，并同意启动谈判程序。在慕尼黑举行的一场记者会上，泽连斯基警告并指出美国的提案中并未涵盖乌克兰所亟需的任何安全保障措施。他强调道：“唯有在安全保障得到明确之后，我们才会考虑资源的分配问题。”

The idea of opening up Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals to American companies originated in Mr Zelensky’s “victory plan”, a five-point vision he presented to then-President Joe Biden and candidate Mr Trump in October. The plan included a quid pro quo: Ukrainian resources in return for America helping Ukraine to build what it called “non-nuclear strategic deterrence”. The Biden administration viewed the plan as wildly unrealistic, not least its request for Tomahawk cruise missiles, and rejected it. Mr Trump, as it now transpires, was more enthusiastic about the idea, though he appears to have read only its first half.

乌克兰的稀土矿产资源向美国公司开放这一构想，源本泽连斯基提出的“胜利计划”，去年10月，他向时任美国总统拜登及总统候选人特朗普阐述的五点愿景之一。该计划设定了一项交换条件：即乌克兰愿以其资源为交换，换取美国协助构建所谓的“非核战略威慑力量”。然而，拜登政府认为此计划，尤其是涉及提供战斧巡航导弹的要求，极为不切实际，因而予以拒绝。相比之下，特朗普虽看似对这一构想表现出更多兴趣，但他似乎没有完全理解整个计划，只关注到了其中的一部分。

Sitting on a geologic rock shield the size of Britain—it stretches from near the Belarusian border in the north-west to the Donbas in the east—Ukraine is thought to hold vast reserves of rare-earth minerals, now vital to high-tech manufacturing. The geology suggests rich deposits of beryllium, graphite, hafnium, germanium and gallium, which are used to make semiconductors, batteries, reactors and other high-tech equipment such as medical imagers. For the Trump administration, the main draws appear to be titanium and lithium.

地理上，乌克兰处在一片与英国面积相仿的地质岩石盾之上，这片岩石盾自西北部邻近白俄罗斯边界的区域一直延伸至东部的顿巴斯地区。据信，乌克兰蕴藏着丰富的稀有矿产资源，这些资源在当今的高科技制造业中占据着举足轻重的地位。地质勘探揭示，乌克兰拥有庞大的铍、石墨、铪、锗及镓矿藏量，这些矿物是制造半导体、电池、反应堆以及诸如医疗成像仪器等其他高科技设备的核心材料。对于特朗普政府而言，尤为吸引他们的是钛与锂这两种矿产。

Ukraine already supplies 4-7% of the world’s titanium, used for paint dyes and aerospace manufacturing, and holds as much as 10-20% of global reserves. The ore is mined from Soviet-era mining towns like Irshansk in Zhytomyr province (pictured). There are meanwhile four known deposits of lithium, critical for electric-vehicle battery production, within the territory Ukraine still controls. The most useful of these deposits, however, is located in Shevchenkivske in Donetsk province, just 5km from the current front line. Another sits in Berdiansk in Zaporizhia province, which is under Russian occupation. The Economist understands Russia may have offered a backchannel proposal to the Trump team for access to those resources.

 乌克兰是全球钛的重要供应国，占据了全球钛产量的4%至7%，钛元素广泛应用于涂料、染料及航空航天制造业，同时，乌克兰还拥有全球钛储量的10%至20%，这些钛矿石源自苏联时期的矿业重镇，例如日托米尔省的伊尔尚茨克（如图所示）。此外，乌克兰当前控制区域内存在四处已知的锂矿床，锂作为电动汽车电池生产的关键原料，其重要性不言而喻。然而，这些矿床中价值最为显著的一处位于顿涅茨克省的舍甫琴科夫斯基，距离当前前线仅5公里之遥。另一处矿床则坐落于扎波罗热省的别尔江斯克，该地区目前已落入俄罗斯控制之下。《经济学人》获悉，俄罗斯方面可能已通过隐秘途径向特朗普团队提出了获取这些资源的访问提议。

Ukrainian metals like titanium could help America reduce its reliance on China and Russia. But extracting from new sites will require serious investment—and not all of it will be cost-effective. Knowing where to dig will be difficult enough. Little has been surveyed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, says Elijah Kravchuk, a geologist. “Ukraine might say it can offer everything to [America], but it doesn’t actually know what is located here.” Further complications take the form of local oligarchs, some of whom already have stakes in the field; slow Ukrainian bureaucracy; and the fact that much information about the industry is still a state secret.

乌克兰产的金属，如钛，对于美国减少对俄罗斯的依赖具有潜在价值。然而，从新矿区开采这些金属不仅需要巨额投资，而且并非所有投资都能确保成本效益。地质学家埃利贾·克拉夫丘克指出，即便是确定采矿地点就已是一大挑战。自苏联解体三十年来，相关勘探工作几乎停滞不前。“乌克兰或许声称能向[美国]提供所需的一切资源，但实际上，它对本土资源的确切分布情况知之甚少。”此外，还面临着一系列更为复杂的问题，包括地方寡头的存在——其中一些人已在采矿领域占有股份；乌克兰官僚体系的缓慢低效；以及该行业中大量信息仍被列为机密的事实。

It is not immediately clear how Ukrainian law might allow for American control over mineral resources. According to the constitution, these belong to the Ukrainian people. A senior Ukrainian official says that one way might be to issue bonds and to create a new holding company—not the American government—to oversee extraction. Andriy Nikolayenko, an MP and former industry insider who leads the parliamentary group on critical metals, suggests the complicated process might end up underpinning Ukraine’s basic interests. Extracting Ukraine’s mineral wealth will require a significant, multi-year investment from any prospective American partner, he says, and that is an investment in the country’s security. “This is not a shop you can build in a week.”

目前，乌克兰法律如何能够允许美国控制矿产资源尚不明朗。依据宪法规定，这些资源归乌克兰人民所有。一位乌克兰高级官员提出了一种可能的解决方案：通过发行债券来创立一个新的控股公司（而非直接由美国政府接管），以监督矿产资源的开采工作。安德烈·尼古拉延科（Andriy Nikolayenko），一位议员及前行业资深人士，同时也是议会关键金属小组的负责人，他认为这一复杂过程最终能够维护和增进乌克兰的根本利益。他指出，从任何潜在的美国合作伙伴那里开采乌克兰的矿产资源，都将需要庞大的多年期投资，这同时也是对安全的一项投资。“这绝非短时间内能够建立起来的简单项目。”

All of this means that even if Ukraine does agree to Mr Trump’s demands, it will be some time before the American president could begin to see a dividend. “A very-best-case scenario for new extraction projects would be the end of his four-year term,” says Mr Nikolayenko. “That’s not to say that existing projects couldn’t be taken away from oligarchs, though they might have something to say about that.”

所有这一切均表明，即便乌克兰满足了特朗普的要求，美国总统也需耐心等待一段时间才能收获成果。尼古拉延科表示：“对于启动新的开采项目而言，最乐观的预估也是在特朗普四年任期结束时初见成效。他补充道：“虽然乌克兰可能能够将一些现有的矿产开采项目从寡头手中收回，但这些寡头可能不会同意，并且他们可能会对此提出反对或采取行动”。

作者：经济学人          来源：一天一篇外刊