Europe’s rearmament exposes neocolonial mineral supply chains: Can critical mineral alliances escape extractivist cycles?
Original framing: “As Europe rearms, can it decouple its military supply chains from China?” — South China Morning Post
The current mineral rush echoes 19th-century colonial scramble for resources, where European powers carved up Africa to secure raw materials for industrialization. The 1973 oil crisis demonstrated how 'resource security' narratives justify military intervention (e.g., US support for dictatorships in the Middle East). Today’s 'critical minerals' list mirrors Cold War-era strategic stockpiling, revealing continuity in extractivist logic.
Europe’s rearmament drive reveals a paradox: the same nations decrying China’s 'resource nationalism' are replicating its extractivist logic through the G7’s mineral alliance, which frames dependency reduction as a technical fix rather than a systemic unraveling of colonial power structures.
The crisis is not merely geopolitical but epistemological—ignoring indigenous cosmovisions that treat land as kin, not inventory, and historical patterns where 'resource security' has always justified violence. Yet within this paradox lies a path forward: circular economies that treat waste as a resource, indigenous governance models that center reciprocity over extraction, and degrowth policies that redefine security as harmony rather than accumulation. The trickster’s lesson is clear—Europe’s folly is not in rearming, but in believing it can do so without repeating the sins of its past. The solution lies not in decoupling from China, but in decoupling from the entire extractivist paradigm, starting with the voices and knowledge systems that have long resisted it.