• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Dont Miss

US Looks To Afghanistan To Counter China’s Rare Earths Monopoly

Michael Hughes by Michael Hughes
08/02/17
in Dont Miss, Featured, World
lapis lazuli blue stone afghanistan rare earth

Lapis Lazuli, rare blue stone endemic to Afghanistan, is stored at a shop in Kabul in this March 2016 file photo. (Photo: AP)

11
SHARES
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Soviet mining experts in the 1980s discovered that Afghanistan was rich in natural resources such as iron, copper, gold, cobalt, rare earth metals, and lithium, but the data lay hidden until the fall of the Taliban.

In 2010, the Pentagon estimated Afghanistan’s mineral wealth at some $1 trillion, although critics argued the deposits are cost-prohibitive to extract, not to mention the perils of mining in a war zone evidenced by China’s inability to extract copper from Mes Aynak for the past decade.

Yet, last week, the trillion dollar question reared its head again with the New York Times reporting that White House officials are looking at Afghanistan’s deposits as a compelling reason to maintain a presence in the country, just as President Donald J. Trump appears reluctant to sign off on the Defense Department’s 4,000-troop mini-surge strategy. But there might be more strategic economic reasons to exploit Afghanistan’s natural resources beyond corporate profits and surge plans — such as countering China’s dominance of rare earth materials.

American Elements Founder and CEO Michael Silver, who is heading the White House initiative, told The Globe Post that Beijing’s brilliant long-term strategy to monopolize rare earth materials has put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage, but Afghanistan presents an opportunity for a paradigm shift.

“We live in a different world than the past, where commodity prices mattered because a monopoly allowed sometimes a single nation or a group of nations to charge an extremely high price for that material, and people are still thinking along those lines,” Mr. Silver said. “That’s not the world we live in today, particularly with rare-earth metals, which is kind of what got me involved in the Afghanistan situation.”

China decided to hold onto rare earth minerals, he explained, to strategically force major high-tech manufacturing companies like General Electric and Applied Materials to move operations inside China to get guaranteed access to raw materials at a reasonable price.

The U.S., he argued, needs an overall strategy to create “a fertile ground for manufacturing to blossom,” just as China was able to do. If Washington is serious about bringing back high-tech manufacturing, Mr. Silver added, it must show a commitment to having raw materials “in hand and always available.”

The goal, he said, is to build “industrial independent environments so America is a free standing competitive manufacturing ecosystem, you might say, like China.”

Mr. Silver believes if China has almost all the rare earth minerals on the planet tied up, the U.S. may only need the remaining 3%, for example, because that could mean decades worth of significant annual usage, although no one to his knowledge has done the full analysis on the projections yet.

“Don’t tell me what percent we have. How many years do we have?” Mr. Silver said.

If the U.S. starts controlling deposits like Afghanistan and can demonstrate having access to anywhere from 35 to 100 years’ worth of product, companies would be willing to set up in the U.S., he claimed.

Mr. Silver did acknowledge, however, that there were plenty of obstacles to overcome.

“There are all types of things that make a deposit costly to work with,” he said. “This one [in Afghanistan] is primarily logistics.”

China, he noted, is building a rail line through the northeast while India is building west through Iran to a deepwater port on the Persian Gulf to ship iron ore. While he could not get into the details, Mr. Silver confirmed that studies are underway on how to create a southern route.

“America is not going to go east through China and we certainly aren’t going to go through Iran,” he said. “That leaves us with one route – straight down through Pakistan in the Pashtun area. So not a particularly safe place.”

Mr. Silver said that, overall, the Afghan minerals initiative is “actively moving on” and that the White House will announce the next phase of the project.

Professor Thomas Barfield, Chair of Boston University’s Anthropology Department, told The Globe Post that U.S. corporations are probably not interested in Afghanistan’s mineral deposits based on the risk/reward calculus.

“There may well be more profit in the downstream value added elements than in direct extraction,” Mr. Barfield said. “State-backed investments by China and India that have fewer resources have been more common because it fits into larger geostrategic plans. Countries have those, corporations do not.”

Mr. Barfield, however, echoed Mr. Silver’s concerns, noting that rare earth minerals “were boring” until Beijing restricted exports and then people were suddenly looking for alternatives to break the Chinese monopoly.

Ahmad Shah Katawazai, a Security Expert with a Master’s Degree in Global Security Studies from Johns Hopkins University, wrote recently in a piece for The Diplomat that the U.S. and its international partners should do a comprehensive risk assessment before embarking on such an endeavor.

“While strategic minerals may give Afghanistan a special advantage in attracting international investment, those mineral resources could turn into a resource curse as Afghanistan struggles with the hostility of its neighbors, internal ethnic fractions, rising insecurity, active insurgency, corruption, warlordism, absence of proper and effective institutions, and more importantly the absence of necessary precautionary measures,” Mr. Katawazai warned.

Share11Tweet
Michael Hughes

Michael Hughes

Related Posts

A Taliban fighter walks past a beauty saloon with images of women defaced using a spray paint in Shar-e-Naw in Kabul on August 18, 2021
World

Afghanistan’s Taliban Government Bans ‘Violent’ Mixed Martial Arts

by Staff Writer with AFP
August 29, 2024
Lai Ching-te attends an inaugural ceremony as president of Taiwan
Featured

China’s ‘Growing Authoritarianism’ Won’t Stop With Taiwan: Lai

by Staff Writer with AFP
August 29, 2024
A protester reacts from tear gas fired by police during a 2019 pro-democracy march in Hong Kong
Democracy at Risk

Rare Hong Kong Protest Sounds Alarm on New Security Law

by Staff Writer with AFP
February 27, 2024
Chinese President Xi Jinping listens to a speech
World

Pacific Nation Nauru Cuts Ties to Taiwan, Switches to China

by Staff Writer with AFP
January 16, 2024
Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen
Democracy at Risk

Possible Scenarios for a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan

by Staff Writer
January 9, 2024
Doctors attended to quake survivors with mild injuries at the Jishishan County People's Hospital
World

China Quake Survivors Recover in Hospitals as Toll Rises to 135

by Staff Writer with AFP
December 21, 2023
Next Post
Turkish military, purge, top brass, reshuffle

Turkey Reshuffles Top Army Brass Amid Controversy

US President Donald J. Trump signing a bill

Trump Signs ‘Seriously Flawed’ Russian Sanctions Bill

Please login to join discussion

Recommended

Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest

‘Red Alert’: Fires Drive Tropical Forest Loss to Record High

May 21, 2025
Men pass a young girl to safety over rubble in Jabalia Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip, on May 18, 2025. Search and rescue teams rescue a Palestinian girl from under the rubble after the Israeli army attacked a building at the Jabalia Refugee Camp

WHO Chief Says 2 Million ‘Starving’ in Gaza

May 20, 2025
Calais, successful crossing of migrants to England

UK PM Says in Talks Over Third Country ‘Return Hubs’ for Migrants

May 16, 2025
AI chatbot applications.

Meta Faces Row Over Plan to Use European Data for AI

May 14, 2025
A photo taken with a drone over Cape Town, South Africa. Photo: Johnny Miller/Millefoto

White S. Africans Due for US Resettlement to Leave Sunday: Govt

May 12, 2025
Cardinal Robert Prevost, newly elected as Pope Leo XIV is seen on the Saint Peter’s Basilica balcony, at Saint Peter’s Square in Vatican on May 8, 2025

New Pope Leo XIV Has Mixed Record on Abuse: Campaigners

May 9, 2025

Opinion

A Black Lives Matter mural in New York City.

Fuhgeddaboudit! America’s Erasure of History

April 2, 2025
Bust of Deputy Rubens Paiva in the Chamber of Deputies

Democratic Brazilians Are Still Here

March 18, 2025
A woman from Guatemala

Dispatch From Central America

January 28, 2025
US President Donald Trump

Dear Trump Supporters: Is This the America You Wanted?

January 28, 2025
Putin talks to Trump in Hamburg

From Roosevelt to Trump: The Complicated Legacy of Personal Diplomacy

November 15, 2024
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Can the UN Human Rights Council Protect Rights While Abusers Sit at the Table?

October 28, 2024
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post