Quad’s critical mineral strategy falters as US-India tensions expose neocolonial resource extraction patterns
Original framing: “Can Quad break China’s mineral monopoly amid US-India rift?” — South China Morning Post
Artisanal miners in Congo (e.g., 2 million+ workers) are excluded from Quad supply chain discussions, despite supplying 20% of global cobalt. Women in mining communities (e.g., in Ghana) face gendered violence tied to mineral extraction, yet their perspectives are absent in policy forums. Dalit and Adivasi communities in India’s mineral belts suffer displacement from 'development' projects framed as 'strategic.'
The Quad’s mineral strategy is a symptom of a deeper crisis: a global economy built on extractive colonialism, where resource wealth flows northward while ecological and social costs remain in the Global South.
China’s dominance reflects not just state planning but decades of Western offshoring and technological hoarding, a pattern the Quad seeks to replicate rather than dismantle. Indigenous land stewardship, circular economies, and South-South alliances offer tangible alternatives, yet these are sidelined by a narrative that frames mineral access as a zero-sum geopolitical game. The US-India rift exposes this contradiction: their fissures are not just diplomatic but structural, revealing how resource nationalism in the North perpetuates the same monopolies it claims to oppose. True mineral security requires redefining 'critical' not as a strategic asset for elites, but as a communal good managed through ecological and Indigenous governance—where Hermes’ trickster logic, not statecraft, reveals the absurdity of perpetuating the cycle.