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Goldstein ’23 [Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia Engagement at the Washington DC think tank, Defense Priorities. He is also a visiting professor at the Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs at Brown University. Goldstein previously served 20 years as research professor at the US Naval War College, where he received the Superior Civilian Service Medal for his pioneering research on Chinese military development. 3-13-2023, "The trouble with Taiwan," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-03/the-trouble-with-taiwan/, St. Mark's School of Texas, Ashrit Manduva '24]

The nuclear problem

The liberal world order is under assault. Polls suggest an American ambivalence about upholding the rules-based global system. Populists are besieging governing elites in the West while Russia works strategically to destabilize European and American governments through propaganda and proxies. A rising China wants to create a global system that is not U.S.-centric, one in which smaller powers defer to bigger ones and norms of democracy and rule of law do not prevail. Meanwhile, the U.S. alliance system looks adrift while competitors in China and Russia appear to be on the march. If it holds, this trend could produce a spheres-of-influence world — which many, including the current presidents of the United States, China, and Russia, find intuitively attractive. But were such an order to replace one based on global integration and American leadership in the geopolitical cockpits of Europe and Asia, it would only engender insecurity and conflict. In a spheres-of-influence world, great powers order their regions. The United States would go back to a “Monroe Doctrine” version of grand strategy; Russia would dominate the former Soviet space; China would govern East Asia, and India South Asia. The problem with this kind of order, however, is several-fold. Too many spheres overlap in ways that would generate conflict rather than clean lines of responsibility. Japan would oppose Chinese suzerainty in East Asia, including by developing nuclear weapons; India and China would compete vigorously in Southeast Asia; Russia and China would contest the resources and loyalties of Central Asia; Europe and Russia would clash over primacy of Central and Eastern Europe. The Middle East would be an even more likely arena for hot war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Turkey would contest regions also claimed by Russia, Europe, and possibly China. Russia, like the Soviet Empire before it, would keep pushing west until it met enough hard power to stop it. A spheres of influence world would also sharpen great power competition outside of each region. Regional hegemony is a springboard for global contestation. China would be more likely to challenge the United States out-of-area if it had subdued strategic competition in its own region. Russia, like the Soviet Empire before it, would keep pushing west until it met enough hard power to stop it. (The fact that Russian troops marched through Paris during the Napoleonic Wars demonstrates that the limits of Russian power need not be confined to the former Warsaw Pact). American leaders have long understood that a “Fortress America” approach is a source of national insecurity. Franklin Roosevelt made this case in a series of “fireside chats” in the run-up to America’s participation in World War II — even before the advent of the far more sophisticated power-projection technologies that exist today. Roosevelt and his generals well understood that the United States could not be safe if hostile powers controlled Europe and Asia, despite the wide oceans separating North America from both theaters. A spheres-of-influence world would also crack up the integrated global economy that underlies the miracle in human welfare that has lifted billions out of poverty in past decades. It would replicate the exclusive economic blocs of the 1930s, including an East Asia “co-prosperity sphere,” seeding conflict and undercutting prosperity. A real-world and real-time example of what happens when American power retreats in an effort to encourage regional powers to solve their own problems is the mess in Syria. It has produced the greatest refugee crisis since 1945 — a stain on the consciousness of human civilization — and has led many to conclude that the Middle Eastern order of states dating to the end of World War 1 is collapsing. President Obama pursued an express policy of retracting American military power from the Middle East, including withdrawing all troops from Iraq and refusing to intervene militarily when President Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, despite a red-line injunction from the United States not to do so. Obama and his White House political advisors believed that American withdrawal from the Arab Middle East (if not from the ironclad U.S. commitment to Israel) would lead a new balance of power to form, one policed by regional powers rather than by America. This flawed, amoral, and un-strategic approach has led to a series of hot wars — in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen — the collapse of Arab allies’ confidence in the United States as an ally, as well as an intensified cold war with Iran. Despite the international agreement freezing Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s support for terrorism and hostile insurgencies targeting American allies across its region actually intensified during this period. A spheres-of-influence world leaves weaker states to become the victims of stronger or more aggressive ones, and it seeds insecurity by removing the reassuring variable of American military guarantees and presence This experience underlines a core problem with a spheres-of-influence world. It leaves weaker states to become the victims of stronger or more aggressive ones, and it seeds insecurity by removing the reassuring variable of American military guarantees and presence. It emboldens American adversaries and leads American allies to take self-help measures that themselves may undercut American security interests. A spheres-of-influence world would also produce contestation of the open global commons that are the basis for the unprecedented prosperity produced by the liberal international economic order. Should the Indian and Pacific Oceans, or the Arctic and Mediterranean Seas, become arenas of great-power conflict (like the South China Sea already has thanks to China’s militarization and unilateral assertion of sovereignty over it) as leading states seek to incorporate them into their privileged zones of control, economic globalization would collapse, harming the economies of every major power. The United States, because of its sheer power and resource base as well as its relative geographical isolation, might do OK in a spheres-of-influence world. Most of America’s friends and allies would not. Their weakening and insecurity would in turn render the United States weaker and more insecure — since U.S. allies are force-multipliers for American hard and soft power, and since norms like freedom of the global commons are in fact underwritten by that power. More broadly, such a transition would also likely lead to the kind of hot wars that reorder the international balance of power, including by incentivizing aggressive states to push out and assert regional dominion, knowing that America does not have the will or interest to oppose them. The fact that U.S. competitors such as Russia, China, and Iran — all of whom want to weaken the American-led world order — would welcome a spheres-of-influence world is another reason for Americans to oppose it. It would also be ironic if the United States were to back away from its historic commitment to shaping a world that is an idealized vision of America itself — one ruled by laws, norms, institutions, markets, and peaceful settlement of disputes.

Ultimately, however, we concluded that the United States has a strong interest in precluding the emergence of another bipolar world—as in the Cold War—or a world of many great powers, as existed before the two world wars. Multipolarity led to two world wars and bipolarity resulted in a protracted worldwide struggle with the risk of nuclear annihilation. To avoid a return such circumstances, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney ultimately agreed that our objective must be to prevent a hostile power to dominate a “critical region,” which would give it the resources, industrial capabilities and population to pose a global challenge. This insight has guided U.S. defense policy throughout the post–Cold War era.

Giving major powers the green light to establish spheres of influence would produce a multipolar world and risk the return of war between the major powers. Without a stabilizing U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf and U.S. relationships with Jordan and the Gulf States, Iran could shut down oil shipments in its supposed sphere of influence. A similar scenario in fact played out during the 1987 “tanker war” of the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually escalated into a direct military conflict between the United States and Iran. Iran’s nuclear program makes these scenarios even more dangerous.

Global retrenchment is fast emerging as the most coherent and ready-made alternative to the United States’ postwar strategy. Yet pursuing it would be a grave mistake. By dissolving U.S. alliances and ending the forward presence of U.S. forces, this strategy would destabilize the regional security orders in Europe and Asia. It would also increase the risk of nuclear proliferation, empower right-wing nationalists in Europe, and aggravate the threat of major-power conflict. 

This is not to say that U.S. strategy should never change. The United States has regularly increased and decreased its presence around the world as threats have risen and ebbed. Even though Washington followed a strategy of  throughout the Cold War, that took various forms, which meant the difference between war and peace in Vietnam, between an arms race and arms control, and between détente and an all-out attempt to defeat the Soviets. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States changed course again, expanding its  to include many countries that had previously been part of the Warsaw Pact.

Our subsequent work together, including at the Special Competitive Studies Project, has confirmed our initial fears. Thanks to a new generation of disruptive technologies and intensifying global rivalries, the likelihood of war between the world’s great powers—and the devastation such a war could wreak—will increase significantly this decade. The best way to deter such a war is for the U.S. military to restore its technological superiority over potential adversaries. We’ve spent the past year designing a strategy that we believe will enable us to do just that. Our window of opportunity is quickly closing.

Most Americans alive today have known only a world in which the U.S. military is dominant. For generations, it has been capable of both protecting our homeland against invasion and underwriting an international order that has fostered peace and prosperity on a scale that humanity had never previously experienced.

US defence giant Lockheed Martin's highly successful fighter jet F-35 made its maiden flight in 2006. This sleek flying machine is still in operation with variations such as the F-35A (2015), B (2016) and C (2019). Each such jet contains 417kg of "rare earths," an essential material without which its intricate electronics and weaponry would not exist. But it is the US' foremost strategic rival, China, who controls the rare earths' supply. Beijing realised the importance of rare earths as early as in 1992, when Deng Xiaoping said, "The Middle East has oil; China has rare earths."

What are rare earths, exactly? These are 17 nearly indistinguishable lustrous silvery-white soft heavy metals in the Periodic Table, a scientific tabulation of Earth's chemical elements) such as dysprosium, praseodymium and ytterbium. From jets or weaponry, smartphones, hard drives, electric vehicles and LED lights, to wind turbines and petroleum processing – everything depends on these "touchstones." Rare earths provide the magical touch to all these products that power today's advanced economies and cutting-edge technology.

Serpell, et. al, 21 --- a research associate at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy (May 2021, Oscar Serpell, Benjamin Paren - a Ph.D. student in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, Wan-Yi Chu - assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland, California and a former postdoctoral researcher in the Goldberg Group, located in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, “RARE EARTH ELEMENTS: A RESOURCE CONSTRAINT OF THE ENERGY TRANSITION,” https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/KCEP-Rare-Earth-Elements.pdf, JMP))

POLICY SOLUTIONS

Deforestation and forest degradation are undoubtedly part of the largest environmental problems our world is facing today. Of the 16 million square kilometers of forest that once covered the earth’s surface, only 6.2 million remain up to date. 2.3 million have been destroyed between 2000 and 2012 alone. Not only does this threaten the balance of local important environmental factors such as water cycles and greenhouse gas decomposition and harm the economy and society of affected areas, but it also endangers many different species, as 80% of all biodiversity is found in forests. The entire planet and its population rely on the fate of forests, it is vital that the issues of deforestation and forest degradation are tackled thoroughly, however, it can only be achieved through close cooperation amongst all UN member nations.

***note when prepping file --- the evidence, especially bottom part, could be useful for the aff IF the plan spurs or includes regulations to ensure sustainable REE extraction and development but teams might be reluctant to defend that (because it would make clean energy costlier and it is likely not topical).

Cho, 23 (APRIL 5, 2023, Renee, “The Energy Transition Will Need More Rare Earth Elements. Can We Secure Them Sustainably?” https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/04/05/the-energy-transition-will-need-more-rare-earth-elements-can-we-secure-them-sustainably/, JMP))

Mining’s environmental impacts

A new Heartland Institute Policy Brief details how the expansion of mining operations for the rare earth minerals needed to scale up “renewable” energy sources to meet the goals of the “Green New Deal” (GND) would cause significant global environmental devastation.

In “How the Green New Deal’s Renewable Energy Mining Would Harm Humans and the Environment,” author Paul Driessen explains how if the GND were enacted, an attempt would be made to replace all electricity generation in the United States from fossil fuel and nuclear sources with that generated from wind or solar sources. To replace all these sources, Driessen makes a “conservative” estimate that almost 19 billion solar panels would need to be constructed and installed, covering an area roughly the size of New York and Vermont combined. He also cites a study from researchers at Harvard University that estimates the amount of land needed to power the country by wind energy would be equal to roughly a third of the continental United States.

Rare earths occur with phosphates in the U.S., which could become a potentially alluring option.[78] Phosphates are extracted for a variety of uses and are of interest for developing a competing battery chemistry (lithium-iron-phosphate or LFP[79]). However, phosphates and REE-containing minerals in sands deposits also bear the radioactive elements thorium and uranium. This presents a persistent dilemma since existing U.S. regulations limit the extraction of these radioactive elements and thereby discourage the pursuit of REE.[80] REE can be harvested from other sources, such as agricultural wastes, and could be captured from deepwater seabeds, affording an exploration frontier. Overall, however, REE exist within an inadequate framework for nonfuel minerals — especially given how critical they are to both legacy and alternative energy technologies, much less non-energy and defense uses.

Residents expressed skepticism about the need to mine so close to a precious body of water, wondering why Sweden cannot focus on getting the recycling facility running in the North of the country if rare earths are needed so badly. After all, the operation in the North is recycling mine waste—an alternative I advocate for elsewhere. But the proposed recycling facility is a part of the puzzle rather than a solution to all the problems. It too requires more mining and the generation of more mine waste. It is not intended to extract rare earths from electronic waste, which is where 96–99 percent of all rare earths end up. It won’t reprocess existing mine waste, which would ultimately reduce the footprint of the current and past mining operations, but process the waste generated by an expanded iron mining operation. It will require building an additional tailings, or waste, area, which further encroaches on Sámi lands and may not be approved by the environmental courts. Here again, polarized political dynamics between residents of two different “remote” potential mining sites reflects a much broader phenomenon. Local communities are often pitted against each other, directly and indirectly. They are seldom part of the process from the beginning and are often only informed during “consultation” processes, in which they may only react to plans long underway. The process serves as a recipe for conflict and distrust, where people are asked to assess the operation and its potential risks with limited information.

A final method for reducing demand for REEs in wind power and EV markets would be to reuse and recycle existing rare earth magnets. Unfortunately, the infrastructure and systems needed to achieve REE reprocessing are severely underdeveloped. REE reuse and recycling is limited by inefficient and costly collection, global shipping constraints, low REE concentration in most products, and long lifetimes of products (Filho 2016). Figure 3 demonstrates the lifecycle of REEs, including existing recycling methods.

Retired wind turbines and EV motors are a source of recyclable REEs, since their magnets are relatively large and can be recovered without too much difficulty. In some cases, large magnets can simply be reused and do not need to undergo the recycling process (Binnemans 2013). However, clean energy applications of REEs face another roadblock to scalable recycling: insufficient stock material.

Given the concerns over new mining, environmental think tanks like the World Resources Institute have been calling for more recycling of existing rare earth materials to reduce the need for new mining and processing.

“The path to the future has to do with getting the most out of what we take out of the ground,” says Bustamante, of the NRDC. “Ultimately the biggest lever for change is not in the mining itself, but in the manufacturing, and what we do with those materials at the end of life.”

While long-term supply resilience is a goal, “industrial planners” must proactively mitigate the risks of immediate rare earth product supply disruptions from China. Manufacturers and designers may opt to use REE substitutes, but substitutes do not perform nearly as well.[77] Designers looking to shift away from China-dominated REE may face the task of engineering their products without these materials as the more viable alternative. Recycling offers possibilities, especially from permanent magnets, but a long path lies ahead for this to become viable. Recycling too often is overstated given the outlook for raw materials requirements. Recyclers face the same delays and conundrums in achieving regulatory reviews and permits to move forward as mining and other industrial projects.

HIRSCH: Which makes the lab production of tetrataenite look kind of like a gift of magical alien technology from outer space, which it sort of is - just without the aliens. But Laura Lewis at Northeastern says it's no quick fix.

LEWIS: Having this is not the same as having a magnet. I often use the analogy - you may have a material to make a brick, but you have to put the bricks together to make a wall. And then that wall makes the Taj Mahal.

Chen & Erickson ’22 [Avery Chen and Camille Erickson, 2-3-2022, “Clean energy transition to fuel growth for China's rare earths sector in 2022,” S&P Global, https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/clean-energy-transition-to-fuel-growth-for-china-s-rare-earths-sector-in-2022-68604096, St. Mark's School of Texas, Ashrit Manduva ‘24]

Changes in competition scope

After decades of geopolitical tensions over access to oil, the transition to clean energy is setting up a global competition over another natural resource: rare earth elements.

The 17 metals, which aren't scarce but are hard to find in economically viable concentrations, are significant to greening economies of the future and the defense industrial base of the United States and others.

A recent study says there are enough rare earth metals on Earth for new “low-carbon electricity generation” technologies.

Rare earth metals come from minerals found in countries around the world.

The past few years have seen ambitious, game-changing climate action from the United States. The Biden administration set a goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, and recent legislation — including the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and a newly proposed EPA regulation to supercharge EV adoption — puts the U.S. within striking distance of its target.

But securing enough critical minerals to support a nationwide low-carbon transition poses a serious challenge.