This is an invitation for Russia to test the Trump administration.

In Monday night’s interview with Sean Hannity, Vice President JD Vance declared that “if you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine.”

“That,” the vice president continues, “is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”

“The security guarantee — and also the economic guarantee — for Ukraine is to rebuild the country and to ensure that America has a long term interest.”

You can watch the clip here, starting at the 11:45 mark.

I’m going to set aside the vice president’s snotty, insulting insinuations about a “random country” in Europe that hasn’t “fought a war for 30 or 40 years” leading a contingent of troops to help provide security to postwar Ukraine — disgraceful and dishonorable comments about countries such the U.K., France, Poland, and the Baltic republics, which have fought beside America in the Gulf War (the U.K. and France), the Iraq War (Poland and the U.K.), and Afghanistan (the U.K., France, Poland, and the Baltics), spilling blood and treasure because their American allies asked them to — and focus on the complete incoherence of the Vance position on security guarantees to Ukraine.

Vance says in this interview that “the very best” security guarantee for Ukraine is to give the United States “economic upside” via the mineral deal.

But Vance is on record as being against fighting Russia or risking a nuclear war or the Third World War under any circumstances over Ukraine. Again and again, he’s said that Ukraine is not worth a single American life.

But how is the United States going to defend America’s new mineral rights in Ukraine from a future Russian attack unless we explicitly or implicitly threaten a military response?

I’m sorry, but does anyone think that Vice President JD “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other” Vance is going to support war with Russia over unproven mineral rights to certain rare earths under Ukraine’s soil? I don’t.

Much more likely of course is that Vance’s conflation of “security guarantees — and also economic guarantees” is a bluff. The Trump administration is drawing a Red Line in Ukraine — but a Red Line that it has no intention of enforcing.

Isn’t this a lesson we all should have learned a decade ago after Barack Obama’s Syria debacle? Didn’t we learn the lesson of Joe Biden’s shocking “it’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion” gaffe?

I will again lay my cards on the table: My own view is that the ideal real-world outcome for Ukraine, as of today, is that Ukraine’s post cease-fire security is built on the post-1953 armistice model of South Korea — but with deployments of European troops instead of Americans as the U.S. concentrates on the Pacific — to train and backstop the Ukrainians as they try to rebuild their country in the shadow of a hostile imperial power. The Russians will retain de facto control over what they currently occupy. The other five-sixths of Ukraine will be protected by Western power and resources, including an explicit American security guarantee to our NATO allies’ deployments.

I think this would work, because I think deterrence works. Deterrence — i.e., America’s military credibility — has protected South Korea for 71 years, it protected an isolated, surrounded West Berlin for decades, and it kept the Fulda Gap from turning into a highway for Soviet tank columns. It’s protected the tiny Baltic republics since 2002 when they entered NATO. 

But I would rather the U.S. not give explicit security guarantees to Ukraine and our European allies than that we draw pseudo-Red Lines that conflate “economic guarantees” with “security guarantees.”

This is an invitation for Russia to test the Trump administration. To probe and needle and see what it can get away with.

Vance says that “the very best security guarantee” for Ukraine is to give Americans “economic upside” in Ukraine. Why? How? That only makes sense if Vance is saying the United States is committed to defending those mineral rights from future Russian aggression.

If he’s not willing to defend that “economic upside” — as I don’t think he is — then how is such an economic guarantee better than the deployment of 20,000 European troops?

It’s not, of course. Vance wants to have it both ways: He wants it to seem like the Trump administration is offering a tough-minded, muscular security guarantee, while giving himself an out if ever called on to make good on it. If he’s called on to defend American’s “economic upside” in Ukraine, Vance will revert to saying he doesn’t want a single American to die for Ukraine.

He’s drawing a Red Line, with no intention of enforcing it. If anyone with eyes to see can see this (no, not you, Sean Hannity), then what will the analysts in the Kremlin think? Will Vladimir Putin be cowed by such a flimsy commitment? 

(And people wonder why the Ukrainians are looking for stronger commitments.)

Whatever else Vance’s mineral-rights Red Line is, if he doesn’t intend to enforce it, it’s foolish. And it will end in grief.