South Africa's Minerals: How Big a Threat?

Riots, bombings, killings, military excursions beyond national frontiers, sharpened political factionalism, economic distress: the news from South Africa signals at least a new stage in that country's unhappy recent history, and perhaps even an inexorable slide into bloody anarchy.

Rightly or wrongly, many of the most outspoken opponents of the white minority government of South Africa identify the United States as a key prop of the regime. Were the government to fall—and most observers think that would occur only after the most violent confrontations—the United States might well be the target of considerable resentment on the part of its successors, whatever their political orientation. What would this mean for what some consider the central U.S. interest in maintaining effective relations with South Africa—the minerals trade?

Nature seems to have taken perverse delight in locating commercially and militarily essential minerals in places where their development and export fall far short of certain. Just as the vast majority of the world's known reserves of oil are in the perennially volatile Middle East, so nature has endowed southern Africa in general, and South Africa in particular, with rich deposits of nonfuel minerals. Of special interest in the what-if-South-Africa-falls question are four metallic minerals that are critical to one or another military application: manganese, chromium, cobalt, and the platinum group.

The United States depends overwhelmingly on imports for these four minerals. Imports account for nearly 100 percent of U.S. consumption of manganese, and the import-dependence figures for chromium, cobalt, and the platinum group hover around the 90 percent mark. Although other sources for these minerals exist, some offer no political-strategic vantage—the Soviet Union, for example, exports both chromium and manganese—while others cannot match the cost and price structure made possible by the extensive deposits in southern Africa. Whatever the reason, the United States depends heavily on South Africa and its neighbors for these important minerals. And whatever one's views regarding the government of South Africa, it would seem that the incendiary situation there bodes ill for uninterrupted supply to the United States of materials critical to its national security.

But appearances may well be deceiving. What, after all, are the supposed threats to U.S. interests from a movement toward black majority government in South Africa? Two plausible answers come to mind, one long-term and the other of more immediate consequence.

It is difficult to envision a scenario for South African rule that does not include substantial black participation and perhaps dominant political control. If and when a black government takes over, would it not be inclined to impose a minerals embargo on the United States to punish it for perceived support of the white regime? Or, short of a full black takeover, are not South Africa's waters so roiled as to make for easy fishing by the Soviet Union, either to control South African minerals or to deny them to the West? We think the answers to both questions are mostly negative.

Sanctions ineffective

Examples of boycotts and embargoes intended to pressure foreign governments are easy to find. For many years, imports of chromium from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were proscribed under United Nations sanctions in retaliation for that country's unilateral declaration of independence from the United Kingdom and for its racial policies. In 1973 the Arab oil-exporting countries embargoed exports to the Netherlands and the United States to protest the Middle East policies of these two countries and, in particular, U.S. support for Israel. The United States itself for a long time prohibited trade in minerals and other commodities with mainland China, and still imposes such sanctions on trade with Cuba.

But examples of successful national economic actions are rare, at least when imposed for political reasons. The Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia eventually gave way to black rule, but the U.N. sanctions had little or no effect on the outcome. The Netherlands and the United States obtained oil through third parties, thus negating the Arab oil embargo. And U.S. trade sanctions applied to China and Cuba, although annoying, have not done much to damage their economies or to sway them from Communism. Indeed, a case can be made that the resumption of U.S. trade with China has done far more than the prohibition of trade to change its political and economic course.

In addition, the long-run costs of embargoes often are high for the imposing countries. Shortly after World War II, for example, the Soviet Union embargoed manganese shipments to the United States and other Western countries. This created considerable concern, because the Soviet Union was a major world supplier of manganese. The result, however, was not the intended change in U.S. policies but rather the development of new manganese mines in India and elsewhere and the loss of Soviet world markets. Similarly, U.S. embargoes of grain shipments to the USSR in 1980 merely shifted Soviet purchases to alternative suppliers and hurt U.S. farmers.

Despite this poor record, embargoes continue to be attractive because they provide a visible means of expressing disapproval. When the use of stronger measures is ruled out, they give the appearance of bold action, whether or not they actually inflict any hardship on the offending country. So, for appearances, governments are likely to continue to impose embargoes from time to time and in the process disrupt the flow of mineral commodities in world trade. But the key word is disrupt, not stop. Regardless of where they fall within the political spectrum, countries typically do not choose to forgo for extended periods the foreign exchange earned by an important mineral.

The "resource war"

Some hard-line cold warriors believe they see evidence of a "resource war" with the Soviet Union that threatens the security of mineral supplies from abroad, and particularly from southern Africa. In its most pointed version this supposed conflict is seen as part of a comprehensive plan to deny the West access to the mineral wealth of southern Africa, thereby complementing a Soviet desire to control the oil resources of the Middle East, with the invasion of Afghanistan as a preliminary step. This jittery view of geopolitics is reinforced by highly visible acts, such as the unfurling of the Soviet flag at funerals of black militants killed in South Africa.

What is not clear in these speculations is how the Soviet Union could pursue a resource war (even assuming it actually wanted to, the evidence on that point being hardly convincing). Clearly the country does not have the foreign exchange to outbid Western consumers for mineral supplies from southern Africa. Nor does it seem likely that the Soviet Union is prepared to commit large numbers of its ground forces to the region, given the logistical difficulties and the likely political repercussions. If it were prepared to confront the West so openly, it would find the Middle East an easier and more attractive target.

This leaves the possibility that the Soviet Union would exploit political and tribal conflicts and support indigenous opposition to South Africa. But while such a strategy can be pursued with much less risk and cost and might extend Soviet influence in the area, it is unlikely to lead to actual control. With fresh memories of the past, neither a new South Africa nor the other nations of Africa will meekly surrender their hard-won independence to a new foreign power. Moreover, their own national interests, not those of the Soviet Union.or world socialism, are likely to receive highest priority. Indeed, Soviet pressures to embargo mineral exports to the West probably would backfire, for such exports correctly are perceived as a vital source of foreign exchange and economic development. When new African Marxist governments have come to power—even with the help of the Soviet Union, as in Angola, Guinea, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe—they have tried to encourage, not cut, their mineral exports to the West and have strengthened other economic ties as well.

For these reasons, the resource war thesis appears implausible. Imports of manganese, cobalt, chromium, platinum, and other mineral commodities from southern Africa from time to time may be interrupted. The region still is going through a turbulent transition as it sheds its colonial past and adopts black majority rule. And the odds on wars, embargoes, rebellions, and even cartel attempts are far from trivial as recently independent states grapple with internal difficulties and hostile neighbors. But to attribute the insecurity of mineral supplies from this region to Soviet policies in pursuing a resource war misses the fundamental causes of this insecurity. Indeed, the notion already has lost much of its visibility and appeal.

The new frontier

Perhaps ironically, some years hence we may wonder why all the fuss was made about the security of conventional minerals. Visible on the horizon are what have been labelled advanced materials. The list is long and promising—materials derived from hydrocarbons, grossly called the petrochemicals; the graphites, more specifically graphite fibers that are hydrocarbon-associated, both in their natural and synthetic forms; materials of nonfuel mineral origin, like germanium, silicon, zirconium, and gallium, used either alone or in a vast variety of mixtures, including ceramic powders; and the so-called composites that draw on two or more of the new materials plus one or more of the conventional ones. And there is the use of new ingredients in old-line metals. For example, a new aluminum-lithium alloy, soon to be available commercially, is likely to become a significant structural metal, especially in the aircraft industry. The diversity of potential uses for the new materials is enormous. This is especially true of new applications in telecommunications, in transportation (both conventional and novel, such as in aerospace), in power generation, and in the electronics field generally.

Moreover, it is all but certain that the developing countries will not relive the materials history of Western Europe, the United States, or Japan. They will not go through a steel, copper, lead, and zinc stage but rather will employ the newer materials, above all the hydrocarbon-based ones, like plastics, even in uses that traditionally have employed the major metals. Indeed, many of them even may skip building the once-conventional basic infrastructure of railroads, ocean-going passenger and freight ships and tankers, large commercial buildings, bridges, and perhaps much heavy industrial machinery. No one can foretell the shape of the future, but it seems safe to predict that it will resemble the past only faintly.

But the advanced materials face a great many hurdles, and progress toward common use may not be swift. High cost is only the first of a host of important questions about the length of the commercialization process, the location and magnitude of eventual effects, and, by indirection, the consequences for conventional materials. The new materials frontier will not be crossed next month or next year.

In short, those who worry about the possible loss of critical and strategic minerals from South Africa, and perhaps its black-ruled neighbors, are not preoccupied with yesterday's problems or with needs soon to be obsolete. We may stand at the edge of a new age of materials, but for now the needs are real and Americans ignore the tinderbox in South Africa only at some economic as well as political peril. Our point is not that the minerals in question are unimportant or that cutoffs in supplies are impossible. Rather, we believe that South Africa's exports of minerals to the United States are not so precarious as to be the dominant factor in U.S. relations with that country. U.S. leaders should act in what they perceive to be the best interests of this country and of the people of South Africa. This is difficult enough without a misleading image of U.S. dependence on South African minerals.

Interestingly, our view in effect is supported by the Reagan administration's July 1985 proposal to revise the U.S. strategic materials stockpile. Simplified, the proposal would delete platinum from the stockpile, cut the cobalt and chromium goals by at least 75 percent, and reduce manganese to half its current goal. Whether intended or not, this proposal, yet to acted upon by Congress, surely implies a relaxed attitude toward future dependence on South Africa's minerals—an implication to be taken all the more seriously as it comes from an administration that hardly can be charged with inattention to national security.