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OAN Commentary by: Theodore R. Malloch
Friday, November 7, 2025
In the heady days of late 1990s post-Cold War triumphalism, there was one foreign policy issue on which Democrats and the then-ascendant neo-conservatives in the Republican party could agree. Namely, the desirability of sanctioning and otherwise isolating the military government in the remote Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar (officially still known to the U.S. Government by its colonial name, ‘Burma’).
Far removed from the important geopolitical flashpoints, there was little cost involved in fabricating a comforting, albeit simplistic ‘black vs. white narrative about Myanmar. Indiscriminately sanctioning the country had the added benefits of satisfying a narrow group of activists and NGOs that the United States was ‘doing something’, while saving politicians and diplomats the trouble of actually having to try and understand the country and its many challenges and ethnic divisions.
So, it should not be surprising that sanctions and isolation was the unthinking, largely automatic fallback policy of the Biden Administration in the wake of the 2021 coup, where the military once again seized power from a nascent, though America-unfriendly, democratic government. Tragic as this was, it should not be controversial to observe that today’s world bears little resemblance to the globe of 1997, when major sanctions on Myanmar were first introduced.
Nobody believes the End of History ideology anymore. Whether it be through the use of force, ‘institution building’ or diplomatic finger-wagging, the world is not being remade in America’s image. In Southeast Asia a peer competitor has risen which has made no secret of its desire to displace the United States from the region entirely. China is not just an adversary.
This means that to simply fall back on such policies while giving no thought to the modern context is both irrational and extraordinarily dangerous for America’s position in the Indo-Pacific. That these policies (in the Myanmar context) have always been and still remain ineffective bolster this argument even further.
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It does not help that the true situation on the ground in Myanmar is serially misrepresented in English-language media and left-leaning think-tanks. Some tough love is in order: Myanmar’s military government is not on the verge of collapse, not by a long shot.
The purportedly unitary ‘democratic opposition’, so dear to Western imaginations and sometimes thought to be represented by the National Unity Government (NUG) is in point of fact a non-entity, having virtually no control of any consequential armed groups in the battlespace, and thus zero chance of being able to govern the country even if the Tatmadaw did collapse.
The significant armed opposition to the Myanmar military only comes from a disparate set of Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs), who fight for the same thing they have always fought for over millennia: autonomy, or the desire not to be dominated by an outside power, be it the British, the Burmese, or (most relevant now) the Chinese.
While these are laudable goals, and while the United States absolutely should be engaging with all these groups, they should not be mistaken for groups of Jeffersonians, and they are not necessarily aligned with the NUG activists that have been making the rounds on the Georgetown cocktail party circuit.
Continuing on the tough love front: China, unlike the United States, does not harbor any idealistic delusions when it comes to Myanmar. While it is a commonplace that China ‘plays all sides’ of the conflict, saying that does not do justice to the sheer magnitude of its dastardly diplomatic accomplishments over the past five years, and its malevolence must not blind us to these facts on the ground.
With the adroitness of a symphony conductor, China has for several years been alternately stoking conflict or tamping it down between multiple armed groups as and where needed as it binds allparties to the conflict into ever greater dependence economically and politically, and (especially) as it plunders Myanmar’s natural resources, including its Rare Earths.
This is not something that the United States can afford to ignore.
If this process were to continue, it would mean the de facto annexation by China of a land area larger than Alaska; one which will give it direct access to the Indian Ocean, thus nullifying the United States’ strategic advantage in the Straits of Malacca. This would be nothing short of a cataclysmic strategic defeat for the United States in larger Asia, one made all the more infuriating because it is so preventable.
If China has a blind spot where it comes to Myanmar, it lies in the fact that it constantly underestimates the extent to which it is thoroughly disliked by every conflict actor. Indeed, deep mistrust and latent hostility toward Chinese encroachment into Myanmar is the one thing that every conflicting party in Myanmar now has in common, including the Myanmar military itself, many of whom can well remember having fought China-backed communist insurgents as young soldiers prior to 1988.
The situation has gotten to the point to where, over the past year, multiple actors, including the Myanmar military, have been reaching out to the one power whom they believe capable of providing balance to the situation, thus preventing Myanmar from becoming absorbed wholesale into Greater Yunnan Province: The United States. Every hand in the country is being held out but so far, inexplicably given the stakes involved, there has virtually been no response at all.
The situation needs to change, and soon. The United States must immediately engage with all (relevant) sides of the conflict, and everything should be on the table. A clear demonstration that the United States is back in the business of realist balance-of-power diplomacy, and that it is determined to help resolve the multi-dimensional conflict in Myanmar in a way that advances its own pragmatic interests would immediately put China on the back foot.
That is in sharp contrast to the audible popping of champagne corks in Beijing that can be heard every time a new round of sanctions is proposed. For the Myanmar side, it has been made painfully clear to the Untied States already that everything is on the table, and this especially includes Critical Minerals, including the all-important Rare Earths. Simply put, we need what they have in abundance.
While ‘critical minerals’ have been in the news a lot these days, what needs to be understood here is that Myanmar is in a league of its own. It is the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia by far, and its unique tectonic position sees the country as one of the most geologically prospective places on Earth.
In fact, of the 54 minerals that were recently classified as ‘critical’ by USDOI, anyone with even minimal geological knowledge and access to the internet can see that Myanmar has known economic concentrations of more than half of them, and this includes certain ‘high risk’ minerals, like tungsten and antimony, (the latter of which reserves are particularly vast). As impressive as this is, no discussion of minerals in Myanmar can avoid the issue of the outsized role that the country plays in the current ‘Rare Earths’ imbroglio. It is perhaps here where the sheer self-defeating lunacy of current Myanmar policy most comes to light.
When it comes to Rare Earths, Myanmar is once again in a league of its own. Not only is the country endowed with Rare Earths, but it is also endowed specifically with Heavy Rare Earths (which are extremely rare, in contrast to their lighter cousins). And not only is it endowed with Heavy Rare Earths, but in Myanmar they occur in very specific geological settings called ion-adsorption clay (IAC) deposits, the chemical properties of which make the elements relatively easier and cheaper to extract and separate.
The vast majority of Heavy Rare Earths in use today come from these types of deposits and there are only four counties on earth which are known to host economic concentrations of them: China, Brazil, Laos, and Myanmar. Brazil is hardly a bastion of pro-American sentiment, and in any case, Chinese companies own the mines there. Laos is so indebted to China at this point that that source of supply can also be cut off at any time. The end result is that China controls 99.9% of Heavy Rare Earth supply and none of the deals or MOUs the United States has negotiated recently is going to change this, certainly not some one-year waiver. According to reliable sources on the ground, we can say conservatively that anywhere from one third to one half of China’s Heavy Rare Earth Supply is in fact coming from Myanmar.
Think about those numbers.
What this means is that one out of every three or more electric vehicles cruising the streets is only doing so by utilizing plundered Heavy Rare Earths from Myanmar. One out of three or more cell phones or computers we use. And most of all, it means that moving forward, the United States faces a brutally clear dilemma: Either (a.) the United States will source Heavy Rare Earths from Myanmar through pragmatic negotiation; or (b.) the United States will source stolen Heavy Rare Earths from Myanmar by paying the Chinese Communist Party for them (and after having sent the Treasury Secretary to Beijing periodically to beg for them).
At some point, we need to ask ourselves whether this precarious situation is a price worth paying in order to maintain an anachronistic, demonstrably ineffective policy which only satisfies a narrow group of left-wing activists (and a very few wayward Republicans, such as Mitch McConnell).
These proposals for comprehensive engagement will be met with predictable responses from the activist left, mostly consisting of a rehearsal of all of the war crimes and atrocities that the Myanmar military has been accused of committing over the past six months or a year. A few self-proclaimed Myanmar experts will attempt to point to the political and logistical difficulties in procuring critical minerals from Myanmar, especially Rare Earths. Both arguments are easily disposed of and solvable. There are plenty of bad guys doing nasty things in the world.
From Israel/Iran to Thailand/Cambodia to Rwanda/DRC, President Trump has proven that hard-nosed realism, pragmatic US interest-driven engagement and relentless transactionalism are indeed capable of solving seemingly intractable conflicts, so much so that a Nobel Peace Prize for the man should be guaranteed. To the extent that the Myanmar conflict can be mitigated, political and logistical difficulties can be arranged. The US needs a Special Envoy to commence this today.
This brings out how jarringly discordant current Myanmar policy is. That the preceding is the consistent ‘America First’ foreign policy position should be obvious to all. In point of fact, a few commentators on Myanmar have seemingly recognized this, as they have publicly voiced their fervent hope that if the activist/NGO community just keep their heads down and stay quiet, perhaps the Trumpian storm will pass them by so that in a few short years they can get back to their hopeless utopian projects (funded by a reconstituted USAID).
While such sentiments from such people is to be expected, what is more concerning is that some Republicans, both in the Administration and in Congress, seem to be unaware of just whose water they are carrying when they shrink back from engagement with Myanmar, or propose round after round of feckless, ineffective sanctions, to no effect.
It’s time for a rethink.
President Trump, here is another conflict you can settle and, in the process, get the prize America sorely needs—a constant supply of premium Rare Earths.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
THEODORE ROOSEVELT MALLOCH, scholar-diplomat-strategist, was a professor at Yale and Oxford. He was to be Trump’s ambassador to the EU but was made Persona Non Grata by that body. The only American with that credit. His memoir, Davos Aspen & Yale is a best seller.
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