While they look similar, Biden's foreign policy edges away from Trump's
Will the next wars be fought over lithium and cobalt?
While Biden’s Cold War foreign policy may look a lot like Trump’s, there have been a few important changes. One of the most notable has been a shift in focus away from the war-torn Middle East and towards Asia and Africa as global competition for new markets and untapped sources of energy intensifies.
The new odd man out is Saudi Arabia, Trump’s richest patron, and steadfast reactionary political ally. Biden’s latest attempt to force down oil prices stands in contrast to his predecessor Trump, who worked to end a price war in early 2020 that crashed prices during the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
While rising inflation threatens to wreck the post-pandemic recovery and skyrocketing oil (and milk) prices become a political liability for Democrats as election-time approaches, Biden is threatening to release millions of gallons of oil from American strategic oil reserves in an effort to drive down prices at the pump.
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the world’s largest government stockpile, was established after the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s and has been tapped in response to Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Libyan supply disruptions in 2011. It also has been used to bring down domestic gasoline prices, such as by President Bill Clinton weeks before the 2000 election.
President Joe Biden is set to announce a plan to release reserves from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on Tuesday in tandem with China, India, Japan, and South Korea, according to officials briefed on the matter. The move, weeks in the planning, is designed to ease this year's rise in fuel prices for drivers and businesses.
Take note of the “in tandem with China” part. The joint decision to release reserves was one of the unreported (by American media) areas of agreement that came out of last week’s virtual meeting between Biden and Chinese Pres. Xi. The U.S. and China are the world’s biggest producers of greenhouse gases and both are feeling the pressure, at home and internationally, to move away from reliance on coal and other fossil fuels. So far, China is in the lead in that area with the U.S. playing catch-up.
The agreement is a small but welcomed sign of cooperation standing in contrast to the dangerous, divisive anti-China policies and propaganda war being waged by Biden’s team.
Biden’s decision to marshal support from China, India, and Japan, pulling together the world’s top four oil consumers, will go down badly in Saudi Arabia, traditionally one of American’s closest allies, along with Israel, in the Middle East.
And this is much more than a tactical shift. It’s strategic in the sense that the immediate future of transportation — including military transportation— belongs to electric and other non-fossil fuels like lithium, cobalt, and hydrogen. Cobalt is currently a key component in lithium-ion batteries, although that could change as the technology improves.
In June, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese issued a report declaring lithium “essential” to U.S. economic security, and “critical” to U.S. national security. Lithium powers everything from our cell phones to Teslas. Global demand for lithium is expected to grow by 4,000% over the next two decades. Right now, the only lithium-producing operation in the U.S. is located in Nevada.
Europe, except for Portugal, has no lithium and must import it all. While more than half of global lithium production last year originated in Australia, Afghanistan, of all places, may have the world's largest deposits of the so-called “White Oil”. China and Chile are also lithium producers.
Biden’s infrastructure bill contains $7.5 billion for EV charging and related programs. The target is to have 500,000 public stations by 2030. Separate legislation—tagged Build Back Better by the administration—now contains provisions that would increase the tax benefits on new EVs to as much as $12,500.
It should be pointed out that while electric vehicles don’t produce carbon emissions, the mining for battery components is no more environmentally friendly than oil drilling and threatens to cause damage to the natural environment wherever it is found. Not to mention the unfathomable problem of battery disposal.
Some 70% of the world's cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), explaining the renewed U.S. economic and military engagement in Africa. The U.S. “neglect” of Africa has already caused recriminations and finger-pointing over “who lost the cobalt mines.”
According to the New York Times:
The loss of the mines happened under the watch of President Barack Obama, consumed with Afghanistan and the Islamic State, and President Donald J. Trump, a climate-change skeptic committed to fossil fuels and the electoral forces behind them.
This is the looming battlefield over which the world’s big powers will contend for hegemony, hopefully find areas of cooperation, and avoid another “eternal war” over energy.
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