How access to critical minerals will determine the new world order

In the post-Crusades era after the 15th century, Europeans discovered new trade routes across the oceans and seas, bypassing Islamic countries, and colonised South and Southeast Asia to secure the import of spices and condiments they required to preserve the flesh of the cattle killed in summer for human survival in biting winters. In the 17th-18th centuries, they colonised Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc. to command transcontinental trade of coal, cotton, and slaves to fuel their industrial revolution back home.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, petroleum, gold, the British pound sterling and the US dollar fuelled their industries and armament factories. The scramble for colonies, their resources, and markets was a key reason for the two World Wars.

As the 21st century unfolded, data also became new gold for a decade or two. Now, in the era of backward integration with natural resources, the focus has shifted to securing supplies of critical minerals and rare earth elements (CMs-REEs); they are the key ingredients for modern technology, global energy transition, and national defence, and to taking the lead in the space era.

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The Moon’s Wealth

To get control of its minerals, the US is planning to rush to the Moon and set up a nuclear fission reactor there by 2030. Nasa and the US Department of Energy are collaborating on this project to provide reliable, continuous power for long-term Artemis missions, habitats, and potential industrial activities.

Russia and China are also collaborating on an ambitious plan to install a nuclear power plant on the Moon by 2035 to support their own joint International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) and provide continuous energy for long-term lunar habitation, as solar power is unreliable during the long lunar night.

In February 2026, Elon Musk shifted SpaceX's near-term strategy, prioritising the establishment of a "self-growing" city on the Moon over immediate missions to Mars. His “Moon First” mission is closely aligned with Washington’s objectives beyond Earth.

Why are these earthly competitors racing to the Moon? Because Earth’s only satellite has no claimants for its natural resources so far, and the early bird will get the worm.

Reprioritising its space forays by 2050, Nasa and its partners are currently developing the Moon as the primary staging ground and launchpad for future human missions to Mars. Through the Artemis programme, the Moon is acting as a testbed for technology, logistics, and long-term human presence in deep space, making the path to Mars more sustainable and feasible.

That is, the Moon will now be the launchpad of spaceships for Mars around the 2050s. To reach the Moon, however, America must first secure minerals from Earth!

Our planet’s only natural satellite contains vast, untapped deposits of CMs-REES essential for advanced technology. They include titanium, iron, aluminium, and thorium, besides high concentrations of REEs found in some rocks. The lunar surface is also rich in helium-3, a potential fuel for clean nuclear fusion.

CMs-REEs

Critical minerals are a broad, policy-defined category of raw materials (including lithium, cobalt, and copper) required for economic, defence, and technology security. The REEs are a specific subset of 17 chemical elements (like neodymium and dysprosium) crucial for high-strength magnets, electronics, and defence systems.

All the REEs are critical minerals, but not all critical minerals are REEs. Critical minerals like lithium are used for batteries, while REEs are heavily utilised for permanent magnets in wind turbines and EV motors, from smartphones to missiles. While named as "rare", the REEs are not scarce in Earth's crust, but they are seldom found in concentrated, economically extractable deposits. High-purity silica is essential for creating silicon wafers used in microchips, photovoltaics for solar panels, and fibre optics, which are the backbone of high-tech and space technologies.

In this decade, the CMs-REEs have suddenly caused a paradigm shift in geodynamics. The US led this shift by renewing its quest for the CMs-REEs and overturning its geopolitical and geoeconomic policies in resource-rich regions like Greenland, Venezuela, and Pakistan—all ‘low-hanging fruits'!

US President Donald Trump’s hunger for Greenland is also because it is an excellent location for placing satellites into polar and sun-synchronous orbits; its high-latitude geography makes it a prime location as global launch capacity tightens.

Unlike many of his predecessors, he is an overt power worshipper. By hook or by crook, his Washington decided to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark, Venezuela, and Baluchistan. Over the years, China had, through its long-term policy of backward integration, subtly gained dominance in this critical sector by debt-trapping several poor countries through the transcontinental $2 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Pax Silica: Forge

Until 2024, few countries evinced much interest in tapping their own CMs-REEs; they were satisfied importing affordable and finished Chinese products. However, Trump’s weaponisation of trade and tariffs became a turning point; it pushed China to leverage its hold on the CM-REEs as a bargaining chip.

Since the 2000s, China has invested around $57 billion in the critical mineral sector in emerging and developing economies. Now was time to reap dividends. It controls most of the world’s extracted REEs, including metals required to manufacture anything from smartphones to fighter jets. China reportedly controls 80 per cent of these minerals and processes 90 per cent of the world’s supply.

In a tit-for-tat, therefore, when the US clamped stiff tariffs in April 2025, China also imposed export controls on seven heavy REEs.

Beijing leads production in nearly 30 minerals designated as critical by the US Geological Survey. This concentration heightened concerns in Washington and other world capitals about supply-chain vulnerability, price manipulation, and the potential use of resource dominance for political leverage.

Last year, China ordered its companies to get government approval before exporting their minerals. These curbs dealt a major blow to the US, whose industries are heavily dependent on these imports. Although Beijing soon eased stricter measures, the world woke up to its utter vulnerability. The US is a distant second in mining, at 12 per cent of these minerals.

The Chinese curbs forced Trump to spend much of 2025 meeting with leaders from Ukraine, Australia, Japan, and countries across Central and Southeast Asia to negotiate trade deals to secure access to CMs-REES. New alliances and coalitions—even among frenemies—began to take shape. Trump, ever the businessman, even wooed Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir!

With this long-term reprioritisation, the US-led geopolitical and economic coalition launched Pax Silica in December 2025 to secure global supply chains for semiconductors, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and critical minerals to reduce dependence on single-source suppliers (China) by creating a ‘trusted’ network of allies. The coalition includes the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, the UAE, and Australia.

Washington hosted a Critical Minerals Ministerial on February 4, 2026, marking a watershed moment in how major economies will now have to view minerals for their own technological self-reliance. Ministers and officials from 55 countries from across Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas attended this key event.

Trump, the self-proclaimed dealmaker, sought to reshape global markets for CMs-REEs to reduce overdependence on China. He launched a strategic US minerals stockpile, called Project Vault, a $12 billion reserve, backed by $10 billion from the US Export-Import Bank and $2 billion in private funds, to stabilise prices and support manufacturers. The stockpile will include lithium and copper.

This ministerial moved the CMs-REEs decisively from the fringes of economic policy to its strategic core and sought to strengthen and diversify their nations’ stocks of critical minerals. Washington forged bilateral critical minerals agreements with 11 countries, building on 10 similar pacts inked over the past five months. Negotiations were also completed with an additional 17 nations.

With Pax Silica, the US unveiled new initiatives to mobilise allies into a preferential trade bloc for critical minerals, including coordinated price floors, as Washington works to counter Beijing’s dominance in the market.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also announced the “Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement” (Forge) to foster collaboration and to build a network of partners across the world. It will complement Pax Silica, which centres on safeguarding AI-related supply chains. Forge is designed as a broader platform to coordinate critical mineral policy, pricing and project development.

“Critical minerals and rare earths are essential for our most advanced technologies and will only become more important as AI, robotics, batteries, and autonomous devices transform our economies,” the US said.

In this kaleidoscopic geodynamics, legal fig leaves, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have all become almost irrelevant. It’s a free-for-all—those who can, will win.

Predictably, China reacted swiftly. “Beijing opposes any country undermining the international economic and trade order through rules imposed by small groups,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said. “Maintaining an open, inclusive, and universally beneficial international trade environment is in the common interest of all countries.”

India’s Take

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar welcomed the development as he underlined the challenges of excessive concentration of critical minerals and the importance of de-risking supply chains through structured international cooperation. He also conveyed India’s support to the Forge initiative and highlighted the country’s efforts towards greater resilience through initiatives including the National Critical Minerals Mission, rare earth corridors and responsible commerce.

The Trump administration's move came days after India announced plans to boost its REEs scheme. In her Union Budget 2026-27 presentation, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government would support mineral-rich states like Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha to develop dedicated rare earth corridors. She also announced the Indian Semiconductor Mission 2.0, aimed at expanding the country's semiconductor mission and competing with China's semiconductor industry to break its monopoly. India is also in discussions with Brazil, Canada, France and the Netherlands on these issues.

Balochistan

Like sparsely populated Greenland, Balochistan is also on the US radar. It comprises nearly 44 per cent of Pakistan, but its population is only about 15 million, out of the country’s 255 million. Several of its areas, including the capital, Quetta, are mineral-rich. That was why Beijing gradually showcased the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as the BRI’s flagship project; it connects China’s Xinjiang with Gwadar Port, also in Balochistan.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief General Asim Munir famously showcased Balochistan’s CMs-REE samples to Trump on September 25, 2025, promoting a likely $500 million investment deal with a US firm. In a return gesture, Trump praised Munir as his “favourite Field Marshal!”

And then America moved quickly.

On February 6, 2026, the US State Department announced an investment of $1.3 billion through the EXIM Bank in Baluchistan’s Reko Diq mines, making it a cornerstone of the Project Vault strategy to secure critical mineral supplies, particularly copper and gold. It will “reshape the global market for critical minerals and rare earths" and is the only investment made outside of the US, as it has some of the world's largest gold and copper reserves, the media reported.

Impoverished, Pakistan has made its minerals the centrepiece of its renewed outreach to the United States, which is eyeing its copper, lithium, cobalt, gold and antimony, worth an estimated $8 trillion. Global copper demand alone is projected to rise from about 30 million tonnes (mt) today to 50 mt by 2050.

According to a CNN investigation, militants operating in Baluchistan and the rest of Pakistan are now routinely armed with US-made weapons left behind after the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. CNN reporters were shown more than 100 seized firearms in Pakistan’s border regions, all stamped “Property of US Govt. Manufactured in Columbia, South Carolina.”

Thanks to Sharif and Munir, therefore, America may ‘liberate’ Balochistan from both China and Pakistan…!

(The author is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)