Kiggins, in Chapter 1 of the book entitled: The Political Economy of Rare Earth Elements wrote that China, in combination with other forms of diplomatic pressure, used rare earths as a bludgeon to forcibly coerce Japan into aligning its policy with Chinese interests or suffer economic hardship. The use of rare earths by China in this manner was made possible by the fact that China presently controls 95% of global rare earth production, Japan relies on China to supply 80% of its rare earths consumption, and that Japan has no readily available natural endowment of rare earths or substitutes. On September 24, 2010, Japan released the Chinese fishing boat captain though rare earth shipments from China to Japan did not resume until November 19, 2010, and then only at considerably reduced levels. Scarcity and the lack of available substitutes for rare earths in combination with China’s dominant rare earths market position and its (ostensible) willingness to use that market position to accomplish political objectives, gives rise to new security risks and vulnerabilities that scholars of global political economy have yet to fully address. The collection of essays in this volume, grapple with the emergence of rare earths as an emergent strategic commodity for which lack of access constitute a security risk with potential to escalate to a security.
The crisis between China and Japan in 2010, underscore that rare earths are crucial for human prosperity and peace in a world increasingly dependent on rare earth enabled advanced technologies. Rare earths are seventeen elements on the periodic table that comprise the lanthanides, metallic elements that when combined with other substances form materials with unique magnetic, conductive, and energy storage properties. The distinctive properties of rare earths enable technologically advanced activities that include social networking, internet surfing, computing, buying, driving, flying, greening, hacking, and worse. Rare earths are essential to the information technology revolution on which humans have come to depend for communication, commerce, and, increasingly, to engage in conflict. Safeguarding ready access to rare earths ensures that humans will continue to reap the social, economic, and political benefits of information, transportation, energy production and energy storage technologies.
In short, rare earths are a strategic commodity over which states do and will compete for control. A strategic commodity is a commodity for which lack of access constitutes a security risk in terms of economic prosperity and security. A security risk is of a less urgent nature compared to a security threat which implies that the existence of a political entity is imperiled. Loss of a strategic commodity may contribute to negative economic and, political outcomes within and between states but, falls short of contributing to the demise of a state as a sovereign entity, directly threatening substantial loss of life among citizens, or radically altering extent global political and economic institutions. Nevertheless, scholars have noted the emergence of rare earths as a strategic commodity arguing that policymakers and scholars can no longer ignore the implications of rare earths scarcity to economic outcomes, environmental pollution, and global security (Dobransky, 2012; Campbell, 2014; Gholz, 2014; Golev et al. 2014; Machacek and Fold, 2014; Massari and Ruberti, 2013; Wübbeke, 2013; Zhang, 2013). The advantage of recognizing that rare earths constitute a strategic commodity with security risk is that scholars and policymakers have a window of opportunity to develop risk mitigation policies before rare earths escalate to a security threat.
This collection of essays builds on the claim that rare earths are a strategic commodity over which political actors struggle for control, through exploring its implications to human prosperity and peace. The ubiquitous use of rare earths in civilian and military technologies in addition, to scholarly interest in rare earths that transcends academic disciplinary boundaries, demands theoretical and methodologically plural approaches to assessing the effects of rare earths on human prosperity and peace. Contributions to this volume reflect scholarly heterogeneity and interdisciplinary. From the perspective of theory, animating the interventions presented herein are perspectives drawn from fields within the academic discipline of political science, namely international relations, political theory, and comparative politics; in addition to contributions from the interdisciplinary field of environmental ethics and the academic discipline of geography. Contributions to this volume employ methods of data collection and analysis suitable for addressing the part of the rare earths puzzle to which each gives attention and that reflect the interdisciplinary approach to this volume. Nevertheless, contributors to this volume are, save one exception, in agreement concerning the strategic significance of rare earths to human prosperity and peace, noting that rare earths rise to the level of security risk though, fall short of rising to the level of existential threat.
Rare earths are essential additives to alloys and materials on which depend efficient function of information and related technologies that have civilian and military applications. Loss in rare earths would inhibit technological innovation, technology function, and productivity gains from technology. However, human beings do not, necessarily, need rare earths for nourishment, shelter, or providing for some level of security, as Walsh (this volume) notes in his contribution. The risk associated with acute rare earth scarcity is more qualitative in nature, quality of human existence or security may suffer by degree or, in Walsh’s view, improve.
For some political actors, such a reduction in degree of quality may be politicized as an existential threat, as Dobransky notes in his contribution. Politicization of rare earths as an existential threat is, perhaps, the most alarming aspect of rare earths as a strategic commodity; for, in global politics, risks may be exploited through embellishment for political gain risking escalation to armed conflict. Perhaps, rare earth-consuming states have political interests related to China’s rare earths market dominance such that politicizing rare earths as an existential threat serves those interests. Likewise, perhaps, China has interests related to its growing domestic consumption of rare earths as it seeks to shift up the value chain (develop expertise producing products worth more in global markets) as part of its economic development and, simultaneously, modernize its military to match that of contemporary great powers. Several of the contributions grapple with this tension arising out of incommensurability of interests – political, economic, and social – attempting to show and warn of the threat associated with over-politicizing rare earths as an existential threat. Accepting that rare earths do constitute a security risk, contributions have relied on the concept of security to structure examination and explication of the unique tensions that have recently pushed rare earth relations into the limelight. Within the academic field of international relations, one area of inquiry is focused on the concept of security and it is from contributions within this area of inquiry that this collection of essays possesses affinity.
Security studies is a research agenda within the field of international relations and discipline of political science. Since the end of the Cold War, security has been treated as an inherently contested concept and security studies scholars have settled in two camps: wideners and traditionalists (Browning and McDonald, 2011; Booth, 2005; Smith, 2005; Dalby, 1997). Wideners, later, critical security studies, seek to expand the scope of security as a conceptual and analytical framework beyond the state and parochial national interests (Buzan, Waever, de Wilde, 1998; Hansen and Nissenbaum, 2009; Huysmans, 1998; Williams, 2003). Critical security studies are explicitly interested in the political implications of security as a claim and call to political action punctuated by the extraordinary use of military force. At its ontological and epistemological core, security constitutes a political claim about the proper use of power by political authorities that ought to be scrutinized, for human prosperity, peace, and, importantly, freedom are at stake (Booth, 2005; Dillon, 2002; McSweeney, 1999; Weldes et al. 1999; Wight, 2006). Traditionalists, alternatively, seek to limit the conceptual and analytical scope of security to nation-states in order to maintain parsimony for the purpose of theory construction (Dannreuther, 2014; Huysmans, 1998; Lipschutz, 1995; Walt, 1991).
Both camps have very different ontological, epistemological, and methodological views concerning the purpose for analysis and scholarship. Critical security studies is primarily concerned with identifying possibilities for and barriers to human emancipation, whereas traditionalists give priority to explaining the causes of war among a discreet set of nation-states labeled “great powers.” Contributions to this volume may best fit in the widener camp, recognizing inherent political motives in acts that invoke security for the purpose of staking claim to rare earth supplies, in addition to noting insecurities generated through rare earths production and use in products that bind individuals to the vicissitudes of late capitalism. The use of security as an analytical and conceptual framework draws attention to political claims concerning rare earths that carry implications for human prosperity and peace – for economic security, environmental security, human security, and national security. Thinking about security in separate categories is not meant to imply that there is no overlap or connection between different categories of security. Rather, thinking through the problem of risk (threat) associated with rare earths is assisted by utilizing security as conceptual framework in order to focus analysis and offer clear elucidation of this multifaceted political issue.
For our purposes, in thinking about rare earths as an emergent object over which political actors struggle to control, security serves as an interdisciplinary bridge over which the politics associated with rare earths supply may be described, scrutinized, and explained. As previously stated, the essential insight among contributors to this volume is that, while political actors may invoke security in an effort to lay claim or justify certain kinds of extraordinary policies to ensure rare earth supply, and that such claims rest on the notion that rare earth supply disruptions constitute an existential threat; rare earths fall short of constituting an existential threat to states, rising to no more than a security risk, presently. In general, invoking security where rare earths are concerned is a mere politicization of the issue. This claim, however, becomes problematic where human and environmental security, associated with rare earth mining and refining, is concerned as Klinger (this volume), Wubbeke (this volume), and Varrax (this volume) note.
Both processes produce radioactive and acidic byproducts that marinate in polluted ponds leaching into groundwater supplies contributing to increased incidences of life-threatening disease, loss of biodiversity, and degradation of productive farmland. These set of environmental and human security threats highlight that much of the security risk (and threat) of rare earths is a function of cascade effects associated with rare earths use in civilian and military technologies and the polluting perniciousness of rare earths production. And yet, Walsh (this volume) points to another dimension to rare earths dependence associated with the accouterments of affluence in late capitalism whereby dissent is suppressed by the dominant through payments made to the subordinate in the form of smartphones, tablet computers, and flat screen televisions. Bread and violence have been replaced in the coliseum with the pleasures of digitized (and distracting) entertainment made possible through rare earths use. Another dimension which, Dobransky (this volume) explores, is the use of rare earths in military technologies on which certain powerful states rely to project military power. It is, perhaps, this dimension of rare earths risk that provokes the most immediate sense of insecurity on the part of rare earth consuming states, especially those with technologically advanced militaries for which the loss of rare earths is perceived to be militarily catastrophic.
Precision munitions rely on rare earth magnets in the small electrical motors (known as actuators) that alter the angle of fins to effectuate direction changes as the munition flies through the air toward its target. The loss of fin actuators would, over the short-term, undermine the military capability of a nation-state that would then have to rely on munitions technology last used in scale during World War II. While the loss in accuracy of munitions as a result of a loss in rare earth supply used in fin actuators may necessitate the adoption of, what in the digital technology era must be considered archaic war fighting strategies and tactics, the nation-state would not be left defenseless or incapable of projecting force. What would change is how that force is delivered to target, that is to say, the quality of force and the capability of limiting civilian casualties. Think of a shotgun pattern approach as opposed to single-shot rifle approach to hitting a target, surely less efficient, less effective, but no less potent in terms of destroying targets or extinguishing human life. Taken together, the many dimensions of (in)security associated with rare earths incite sufficient anxiety suitable for policymakers and scholars to critically engage and assess the extent to which rare earths promote or detract from human prosperity and peace. Acknowledging the link between security and rare earths leads one to examine the global rare earths market structure in an effort to identify the politics and economics of rare earths supply, potential supply risk, and how to manage that risk.
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