Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
by Steve Rushton
In 2022, an internal report from the Canadian Department of National Defence predicted that securing access to minerals will have a similar impact on geopolitics – driving wars, causing social and ecological conflict – in the 21st Century, as fossil fuels did during the 20th Century. Three years on, this seems even more plausible.
Oil-rich regions like the Nigerian Delta and Peruvian Amazon have long become “sacrifice zones” where global corporations and local elites profit leaving social and environmental catastophe, where the local populations are exposed to violence and wars for resources. Mining has similar consequences. In West Papua, Freeport-McMoRan and the Indonesian State who operate the Grasberg Mine, stand accused of causing ecocide and funding military and security forces that commit human rights against the indigenous West Papuan population.
To resolve the accelerating climate meltdown, the nations made rich from oil-driven capitalism (the Global North) are advocating the expansion of mining for “critical minerals” or “transition minerals”. They assert these minerals are essential to build the components for a green technological revolution to decarbonise the economy. However, despite the green hype, most of these minerals are also vital to ecologically harmful industries, including military, aerospace, and digital tech. Three so-called transition minerals are lithium and cobalt, both used for electric vehicle batteries and fighter jets, and tungsten, to make both wind turbines and armour-piercing weapons. Furthermore, there is a strong case that the planet cannot sustain some of the supposed “environmental” aspects within green capitalism’s plan, such as the mass rollout of EVs.
There are 17 rare earth elements, also defined as critical/ transition minerals. In reality these elements are not rare, instead found in low concentrations that are difficult to extract. The phrase “trace earth elements” may be more accurate. Examples include neodymium (used in wind turbines and fighter jets), terbium (for TV screens, medical, and military uses), and scandium (found in aircraft, sports gear, and guns). These minerals are often dispersed among other minerals found in abundance, such as iron ore, meaning extraction is often supported by state subsidies. This is commonplace for instance in China.
There is a broad consensus that demand for the so-called transition minerals will rise enormously over the coming years. This means more mines. This in turn threatens indigenous peoples from Chile to the Arctic, from Australia to Tanzania. They face the prospect of their lands being made into “Green Sacrifice Zones”, ecosystems destroyed as they were by previous colonial extractivism, this time backed by ‘greenwashing’ justifications. As demand for “green transition” minerals grows, so does the violence tied to the extraction. Missing Voices, a report from NGO Global Witness published in September 2024, found mining was linked to 25 killings of land and human rights defenders in 2023—the highest of any sector.
This means we must ask what minerals and technologies are really essential for an ecologically sound transformation? How much of those minerals can be extracted globally and how can we reduce the demand?
After years of subsidising extraction and processing, China now dominates global trade in many critical minerals and rare earth elements, boosting its geopolitical influence. To gain political leverage like oil-rich nations, China can reduce the supply of minerals, as it has done with lithium and graphite that are essential in the production of electric vehicles. In response to Trump-era tariffs, China has also limited exports of rare earths like yttrium, crucial for digital screens, jet engines, and precision radar, using its mineral dominance as a tool in trade wars.
China’s trade dominance in minerals provides it advantages in the production of sophisticated weapon and military technologies. As China has established this trade dominance over minerals over the course of the last decades, it may dominate a global economy – that remains driven by growth and overconsumption – for some time to come.
Minerals are also causing hot wars. One area where controlling critical minerals is a driving force for war is the Kachin province, in the north of Myanmar. Here there is ongoing fighting between the military junta and independentist forces. Myanmar is now the world’s largest source of rare earth elements, predominantly based in this province, in supply chains controlled by China. Securing critical minerals is a key factor in the conflict in the DRC; Ukraine is another ongoing war where the Russian occupation has captured many mineral rich areas.
A great deal of the demand for critical minerals is for war machines and tech. Wars are being fought to control these minerals. This replicates how wars are often fought for oil. Plus it takes a lot of oil to fight wars. With transition minerals in demand for militaries, this will only escalate this vicious and violent global cycle. Not least as the faster military jets and other machines made by these new minerals will run on oil – not renewables.
When it comes to mineral policies, President Trump has significantly changed US strategy. Yet even before him, the US was focused on increasing its control and access to extract and process minerals. Through Biden’s flagship Inflation Reduction Act US, investment in green technology increased – for instance increasing lithium battery production, although this support focused more on manufacturing, less on mineral extraction and processing.
Under Biden’s presidency, the US attempted to collaborate on minerals strategy with traditional allies, such as the EU. This included the State Department-led Minerals Security Partnership, which continues to finance mining projects with over a dozen large nations, EU included. Biden’s administration also had discussions – although never ratified – an EU-US Critical Minerals Agreement.
In addition to the US, countries like the UK, Australia, Canada, and the EU now have strategies to secure mineral supplies. In 2024, the EU passed the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), fast-tracking the application process for permits for strategic mineral projects and offering “green” funding. Under its first round, 47 projects within the EU and 13 abroad were approved. The Sami, Europe’s last indigenous people, assert the CRMA will further violate their indigenous rights to determine what happens on their land and this amounts to “green colonialism.”
In short, under Biden the US and EU were moving in a similar direction on minerals. Global capitalist institutions also back this “green” mining. The World Bank and World Economic Forum (WEF) both promote mining through initiatives like the World Bank Extractives Global Programmatic Support program and Climate-Smart Mining Initiative, and WEF’s Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition.
Under Trump’s presidency, despite his hostility to the green transition, the US has accelerated in precisely the same direction. Critical minerals are reportedly a key motivator behind Trump’s ambitions to take over Canada and Greenland.
How much President Trump will alter geopolitics is an open question. What does look certain is that the rush critical minerals will replace fossil fuels as the dominant driver of global geo-politics.