Strategic Minerals Revisited

Abstract

The issue of Western vulnerability to interruptions in the supply of ‘strategic’ or ‘critical’ non-fuel minerals, particularly as a result of direct or indirect Soviet action, has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Concern over strategic minerals supply at the time of the Korean War, and continuing through the Eisenhower Administration, was followed by a period of complacency lasting into the 1960s in which the primary concern was the economic problem of excess supply. By 1973–74, however, US mineral requirements exceeded existing production capacity as a result of Vietnam War demand coupled with substantial growth throughout the OECD economies. Rapidly increasing prices, together with the nationalization of major producing facilities in the Third World (all this in the wake of the OPEC challenge) raised new fears of potential mineral shortages.¹