Resources and Resource Conflicts

Resources have driven major shifts in geopolitics for over a century. The discovery of oil in the Middle East transformed global politics, with the U.S., U.K., USSR, and others competing for influence in producing countries throughout the 20th century. Natural gas pipelines have been instruments of European energy policy and Russian influence; the dependence of Germany and other European countries on Russian gas was a major factor in the politics of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Water rights along major rivers (the Nile, Mekong, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus) shape diplomatic relations. Rare earth elements, critical to electronics and clean energy, are concentrated in China, which has used export controls as leverage. Each resource has its own geographic distribution and strategic significance.

The energy transition is reshaping resource geopolitics. Oil and natural gas are gradually losing strategic value as the world moves toward electric vehicles and renewable energy. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other battery minerals are gaining strategic importance, with their geography largely concentrated in Australia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, and a few other countries. Solar panels and wind turbines depend on supply chains heavily concentrated in China. Critical mineral diplomacy has emerged as a major theme of climate-era international politics. The transition will not eliminate resource competition; it will shift it toward different resources and different geographies.

Water deserves special attention because of climate change. As populations grow and droughts intensify, water becomes scarcer in many regions. The Nile basin involves negotiations among Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and other countries over Ethiopia is large new dam. The Mekong River is dam construction in China affects downstream countries in Southeast Asia. The Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, signed in 1960, has held for decades but faces growing pressure. Water disputes have rarely caused outright wars (water is hard to seize and use without infrastructure), but they generate persistent tension and complicate diplomatic relations. As climate change accelerates, water geopolitics will likely become more prominent.

Resource geopolitics is one of the most consequential and most underappreciated topics in international affairs. The next lesson covers another major dimension of contemporary geopolitics: the role of borders, populations, and migration.