The United States’ management of Turkish-Russian tensions in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, which I proposed here as part of a larger NATO-Russian Non-Aggression Pact, could lead to the merger of its planned rare earth mineral investments in Central Asia and related post-Ukraine joint projects in Russia.
Regarding the first, Trump clinched such deals with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan during the latest C5+1 Summit in DC, while the second were described by the Wall Street Journal in a recent report.
If Turkish-Russian tensions worsen in Central Asia and the Ukrainian Conflict continues raging, thus delaying the United States’ joint minerals projects in Russia, then the US will be fully dependent on Turkiye for importing its rare earths from Central Asia.
That’s because the Afghan and Iranian routes are unviable for security and political reasons, so the only realistic one is from Turkiye, the western anchor of the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) across Armenia to Azerbaijan and Central Asia.
TRIPP will gradually replace Russia’s regional influence with Turkish-led Western influence, but this will also turbocharge Turkey’s rise as a Eurasian great power, which might empower it to defy the US even more than it already does.
The forms that this could take include cooperating more closely with China in Central Asia to break the Americans’ planned containment of the latter, funding more (possibly US terrorist-designated) Muslim Brotherhood chapters and weaponizing its pivotal role in TRIPP to blackmail the US.
These dark scenarios can be averted if the US manages Turkish-Russian tensions and brokers an end to the Ukrainian Conflict.
In that event, the US could diversify from its dependence on TRIPP and therefore Turkiye for importing rare earths from Central Asia by relying on Russia’s nearby Trans-Siberian Railway, which can conveniently deliver these resources to Vladivostok from where they can then be shipped to the Californian tech hub. This can then lead to the merger of its two rare earth minerals investments.
Not only would joint rare earths projects with Russia be unlocked, but the same US companies investing in Central Asian ones could then more easily scale their regional operations northward, with resources from both projects being shipped to the Pacific via the Trans-Siberian.
The increased logistical and resource importance of Siberia and the Russian Far East for the US could then lay the basis for more joint projects there and in the neighboring Arctic, thus advancing Putin’s master development plan for those regions.
The US and other investors in Mongolia’s mineral sector might also begin rerouting exports through the Trans-Siberian instead of continuing to rely on the Americans’ systemic rivals, the Chinese.
The gradual result could be the creation of complex strategic interdependence between the US and Russia, something that was non-existent prior to the “special operation” against Ukraine, for reducing the risk of another crisis. The US would also establish a strategic economic presence along China’s western and northern peripheries that could be flaunted for prestige.
Amidst the Sino-US rivalry, the US has an interest in obtaining access to Russian resources – access that ipso facto denies them to China, whose superpower trajectory would be turbocharged by unlimited access at the bargain-basement prices that would characterize the trade without robust US competition.
This makes the proposed arrangement of grand strategic importance to the US, which is why Washington should broker an end to the war in Ukraine and then manage Turkish-Russian tensions in Central Asia without delay.
