By Ramachandran Rajeev Kumar — 2026-02-08

The War You Cannot See

The next great power competition will not be fought with aircraft carriers or hypersonic missiles. It will be fought over rocks. Specifically, over a handful of elements scattered across the periodic table--lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, gallium, germanium, and the seventeen rare earth elements--that have become as strategically vital in the twenty-first century as oil was in the twentieth.

When External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar flew to Washington in the first week of February for the inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial, he was not making a courtesy call. He was joining what may be the most consequential resource alliance since OPEC--except this one is designed not to control supply, but to break a monopoly.

The monopolist is China. And the monopoly is almost total.

The Scale of the Problem

The numbers are staggering, and they deserve to be understood in full before we discuss solutions.

China controls approximately 70% of global rare earth mining. That alone would be concerning. But mining is only the first link in a value chain that China has spent three decades quietly dominating. In processing and refining--where raw ore becomes usable material for magnets, batteries, semiconductors, and defence systems--China's share rises to approximately 90%.

For specific minerals, the concentration is even more extreme. China produces 98.7% of the world's gallium, essential for semiconductors and 5G infrastructure. It produces 95% of global magnesium, critical for lightweight alloys in aerospace. It refines over 90% of graphite, without which no lithium-ion battery can function. It processes approximately 60% of the world's lithium and cobalt--the twin pillars of the electric vehicle revolution.

The International Energy Agency tracks 20 strategic minerals. China is the leading refiner for 19 of them.

This is not market dominance. This is structural control over the material foundations of modern civilisation. Every electric vehicle, every wind turbine, every smartphone, every fighter jet, every satellite--all depend on materials that flow through Chinese processing facilities. Beijing does not need to fire a missile to cripple a rival's economy. It simply needs to restrict exports.

And it has already demonstrated the willingness to do so.

The Weaponisation Precedent

In 2010, during a territorial dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, China quietly restricted rare earth exports to Tokyo. The message was received with alarm across every capital that depended on Chinese minerals. In 2023, Beijing imposed export controls on gallium and germanium. In 2024, it tightened restrictions further, targeting antimony and other materials with military applications.

Each restriction was calibrated--enough to remind the world of its dependency, not enough to trigger a full decoupling. But the trajectory is clear. China has demonstrated that critical mineral supply is not merely an economic asset but a geopolitical weapon, deployable at the moment of Beijing's choosing.

This is the context in which 54 nations gathered in Washington on February 4, at the invitation of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to launch something called FORGE.

FORGE: The Alliance Takes Shape

FORGE--the Forum on Resource and Geostrategic Engagement--replaces the Mineral Security Partnership, a Biden-era initiative that was heavy on ambition and light on execution. The Trump administration's rebranding is more than cosmetic. FORGE is designed to be operational, not aspirational.

The gathering was remarkable for its breadth. Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer all participated. Fifty-four countries sent representatives, plus the European Commission. This was not a side event at a climate conference. This was a full-spectrum strategic mobilisation.

Jaishankar's presence--and his public endorsement of the initiative--signals that India has moved from observer to participant in the critical minerals realignment. During his address, he spoke directly about the challenge, flagging the risks of excessive supply concentration and calling for structured international cooperation to de-risk supply chains.

The diplomatic language was careful. The strategic intent was not.

India's Play: From Dependency to Corridor

India's dependency on China for critical minerals mirrors the global pattern but with additional urgency. India imports nearly all of its lithium, cobalt, and processed rare earth elements from China. For a country that aspires to manufacture electric vehicles, build advanced defence systems, and develop semiconductor fabrication capacity, this dependency is not an inconvenience. It is an existential strategic vulnerability.

The Modi government's response has come in three overlapping waves.

The first is the National Critical Minerals Mission, announced in the 2024 Budget and expanded in 2025, which aims to map, explore, and develop domestic mineral reserves. India possesses significant deposits of rare earths, lithium, and other critical minerals--particularly in Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and the northeast. The challenge has never been geology. It has been the absence of processing infrastructure, the bureaucratic thicket of mining approvals, and the sheer scale of Chinese competition.

The second is the Rare Earth Corridors programme, unveiled in the 2026 Budget, which goes beyond extraction to build domestic separation, purification, and magnet manufacturing capacity. This is the critical gap. India can mine rare earths. What it cannot yet do--at scale--is convert those raw materials into the permanent magnets that go into wind turbines, electric motors, and guided missiles. The Rare Earth Corridors are designed to close that gap.

The third is diplomatic: joining FORGE and positioning India as both a consumer seeking supply security and a potential alternative processing hub for allied economies looking to diversify away from China. India's pitch is straightforward--it has the geology, the labour force, the growing domestic demand, and the democratic governance framework that de-risks investment compared to mining operations in politically unstable regions.

The Budget Signal

The 2026 Union Budget's treatment of critical minerals deserves closer attention than it has received. Beyond the headline allocation, the budget reduced import duties on critical minerals, expanded the list of minerals eligible for exploration incentives, and allocated dedicated funding for processing technology development.

These are not symbolic gestures. They represent a recognition--at the highest levels of economic policymaking--that India's aspirations in electric mobility, renewable energy, defence manufacturing, and semiconductor production are all bottlenecked by the same constraint: access to processed critical minerals that currently flows through Beijing.

The budget also allocated funds for strategic mineral reserves, echoing the strategic petroleum reserves that India maintains for energy security. The logic is identical: when supply can be weaponised, stockpiling becomes a national security imperative.

The China Paradox

There is an uncomfortable irony at the heart of the FORGE initiative. The 54 nations seeking to break China's mineral monopoly are, in many cases, simultaneously deepening their economic ties with Beijing in other domains. India trades more with China than with any other country. The European Union's economic relationship with China is deeply entangled. Even the United States, for all its decoupling rhetoric, remains dependent on Chinese supply chains in critical sectors.

Breaking mineral dependency will take a decade at minimum. New mines take seven to ten years from discovery to production. Processing facilities require massive capital investment and technical expertise that China has spent thirty years accumulating. Alternative supply chains--in Australia, Canada, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and India--exist in various stages of development, but none can replicate Chinese scale in the near term.

This means that for the foreseeable future, the FORGE nations will be in the paradoxical position of organising against a dependency they cannot yet escape. The ministerial was the easy part. The hard part--building mines, processing plants, and supply chain infrastructure at scale, while navigating environmental regulations, community opposition, and the economics of competing with Chinese state-subsidised operations--is where ambitions go to die.

Why India's Position Matters

In the FORGE coalition, India occupies a unique position. It is not a Western nation pursuing decoupling as a geopolitical strategy. It is a developing economy with genuine mineral wealth, a massive domestic market for processed minerals, and a pragmatic foreign policy that maintains working relationships with both the United States and China.

This gives India leverage that purely Western-aligned nations lack. India can participate in FORGE without framing it as anti-China containment--a distinction that matters in African and Latin American mining jurisdictions where China has invested heavily and where overt geopolitical framing can be counterproductive.

India's value proposition to the FORGE coalition is also practical. It has the engineering talent, the growing manufacturing base, and the scale of domestic demand to justify processing investments that would not be economically viable in smaller markets. A rare earth separation facility in Rajasthan serving both Indian defence needs and export markets for FORGE partners is a different economic proposition than one serving only a small domestic market.

The Long Game

Jaishankar's trip to Washington was not headline news. It did not involve the drama of a trade deal or the theatre of a summit. But in the quiet grammar of strategic positioning, it may prove to be one of the more consequential diplomatic moves of 2026.

The world is slowly waking up to the fact that the green energy transition--the electric vehicles, the wind farms, the battery storage systems, the solar panels--all depend on a supply chain that runs through China. The defence systems that nations rely upon for security depend on the same supply chain. The semiconductors that power the digital economy depend on the same supply chain.

FORGE is the first serious, multi-lateral attempt to build an alternative. India's decision to join--publicly, at ministerial level, with the External Affairs Minister personally endorsing the initiative--is a statement of strategic intent.

The mineral fortress that China has built over three decades will not be dismantled in three years. But the blueprints for an alternative architecture are now being drawn. And India, for the first time, is sitting at the drafting table.

The next war will not be fought over borders. It will be fought over the periodic table. And the nations that control the supply chain will control the century.