Publisher’s Piece on Why Rare Earths Matter More Than You Think
By Terrance Rey, Publisher – StMaartenNews.com
When I first read Tom Clifford’s article on rare earths, I was struck not just by the subject — these obscure minerals that quietly power modern life — but by his final line:
“It has not been used by Beijing in the latest trade spat between the two nations.”
That understated sentence stayed with me. Clifford had just reminded readers of China’s past warning — “Don’t say we didn’t warn you” — a phrase historically used before armed conflicts. Yet this time, he points out, Beijing chose not to use it. That omission is no accident. It reflects a calculated moment of restraint and, more importantly, a profound recognition of interdependence.
This realization led me to an unsettling yet inescapable conclusion — a phrase that sums up our era of entangled economies and shared vulnerabilities:
“Mutually assured economic and social destruction.”
In the Cold War, deterrence was nuclear; today, it’s economic. The battleground is no longer missile silos, but global supply chains. Clifford’s article, read between the lines, reveals a world held together not by goodwill, but by the fear of economic collapse.
China’s dominance in rare earth mining and refining grants it immense strategic leverage. In theory, it could weaponize supply, halting exports of critical minerals like yttrium and dysprosium — materials essential to smartphones, renewable energy systems, and modern weaponry.
But that same leverage comes with a mirror image of vulnerability. The United States and its allies are deeply dependent on these imports, yes — but China, too, depends on the steady flow of exports for its own industrial growth, its foreign reserves, and its global reputation as a reliable trading partner.
Cutting off supply would not be an act of strength. It would be an act of self-harm.
And so, what we witness today is not dominance but symbiotic deterrence — an uneasy balance of power in which both sides hold the means to disrupt, yet neither dares to act. Clifford’s quiet closing line reflects that equilibrium. China’s silence is strategic. Its inaction is its message.
The rare earths debate, then, is not about minerals. It’s about modern civilization’s fragility — how deeply connected our prosperity has become, and how quickly it could all unravel. If these essential elements ever became pawns in a full-blown geopolitical confrontation, the result would not be victory for one side, but collapse for both — a textbook case of mutually assured economic and social destruction.
In that sense, Clifford’s restraint in writing mirrors China’s restraint in policy. Both acknowledge the same truth: in a world so interwoven by technology, trade, and dependence, the power to disrupt is also the power to self-destroy.
And that, perhaps, is the real lesson buried in a traffic jam reflection — that our progress, like our devices, depends on connections we can no longer afford to break.
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Related reading: Why Rare Earths Matter More Than You Think
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