Cold War History Offers the Solution to the Looming Global Race for Critical Minerals

There’s a global race on for critical minerals. While most Americans know little about it, renewable energy technologies, as well as electric vehicles and batteries, require enormous quantities of metals. Demand for copper, cobalt, and lithium is expected to soar in the years to come. The simmering geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China has made supply chains more vulnerable to disruption—heightening the importance of this mineral race even further.

The two countries have been hitting each other with tariffs and export bans, with the latest occurring on Dec. 3 when China banned the export of several critical minerals required for military technologies.

The U.S. has responded to concerns that China might restrict the export of minerals by trying to diversify its supply chain. That included support for the recent re-opening of a long-closed tungsten mine in South Korea to secure supplies of a metal used in microchips, as well as armaments. 

While the stakes are high and the need for minerals is driven by cutting-edge technology, such concerns are nothing new. In fact, the very same tungsten mine recently re-opened in South Korea was part of an earlier mineral fight. Seventy years ago, during the Korean War, the U.S. helped to open this mine, in an attempt to avoid imminent shortages of the metal. This earlier chapter in the search for critical minerals offers some solutions for solving scarcity that could address the concerns rising up in the U.S. once again. 

In the early 20th century, the U.S. underwent a historic shift from relative self-sufficiency when it came to critical minerals like copper and manganese to depending on imports, as economic and military expansion necessitated a greater volume and variety of minerals.

That didn’t pose a serious problem until the late 1940s. But as the Cold War escalated, American officials became concerned that it could impede the imports of cobalt, copper, manganese, tungsten, and uranium. These minerals were critical for the burgeoning electronics industry — and for the weapons demanded by the growing arms race with the Soviet Union.

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The 1950 onset of the Korean War intensified these fears. The region was one of the largest sources of tungsten, key for the production of armor, armaments, and industrial drills, and the U.S. had few domestic sources. 

This prompted President Harry Truman to dispatch American mining engineers and geologists to South Korea to build an industrial complex around one of the biggest tungsten deposits in the world, Sangdong Mine. Truman’s administration also agreed to purchase all of the metal that the mine produced to build a domestic stockpile. U.S. engineering contractors built a processing plant, power plant, and grid infrastructure. By 1953, this enabled the U.S. to import high-grade tungsten from the mine.

Success at Sangdong Mine turned the initiative into a blueprint for policy throughout the 1950s. President Dwight Eisenhower entered office in 1953 acutely aware of the need to diversify mineral supply chains. He gravely warned Americans that “the material resources of the world” were being depleted “at an accelerated pace.” That raised the prospect that prices could rise “sharply.” 

He advocated for dramatically expanding domestic stockpiles of critical minerals, diversifying supplies from outside the U.S., and providing financial assistance for exploration efforts and infrastructure expansion.

Yet, Eisenhower faced pushback to some of these initiatives from within his own party. A protectionist faction in the GOP wanted to focus exclusively on developing domestic self-sufficiency. In 1953, Republican Senators from this wing of the party conducted an investigation into mineral policy. They concluded that depending on “sources in far-off lands, many under the control of possible fickle allies or timid neutrals” for “essential raw materials” placed “the vital security of this nation… in serious jeopardy.”

They pushed domestic mining as a solution. When that wasn’t possible, Republicans like Nevada Senator George Malone demanded that Eisenhower source minerals only from nearby regions that could be easily defended. The Senators’ arguments and demands were a mixture of Cold War paranoia and savvy politics. Senators from mining states like Malone understood that their constituents stood to benefit economically from a policy of domestic self-sufficiency.

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Nonetheless, despite their advocacy, protectionism lost out for a simple reason: unlike manufacturing, mining can only happen where there are minerals, not wherever policymakers want it to. The sheer variety of minerals required by an industrialized economy simply couldn’t be sourced domestically.

But that wasn't the only obstacle facing the Eisenhower Administration. With the U.S. desperate for minerals, resource-rich nations had leverage over the administration. In 1954, for instance, Bolivia sent a consignment of poor-quality tungsten to the U.S. that didn’t meet the agreed-upon minimum quality standards. Yet, American government officials feared that if they rejected the tungsten, it might jeopardize future shipments. This concern prompted them to buy the substandard shipment anyway.

Efforts to diversify mineral supplies went beyond simply buying what was produced. The U.S. loaned money to expand transport infrastructure in Brazil and Zambia. They also loaned money to companies in Congo to expand hydroelectric dams to power smelters and refineries and to build new mines and refineries in Zambia. The U.S. received repayment in metal: tons of cobalt and copper, equivalent to the value of the loans, were shipped to the U.S.

These efforts proved highly successful. By 1960, cobalt sourced from Africa meant that the U.S. had sufficient stockpiles to meet domestic demand for five years.

To some extent, these efforts even ended up being too successful. They produced so much of the necessary minerals that Eisenhower’s successors in the 1960s and 1970s had to sell off the stockpiles. Even then, however, the government was able to do so at a profit, punctuating the success of the mineral supply chain initiatives.

This effort provides a blueprint that can work again in 2024. That’s especially true because places with minerals in the 1950s continue to have them today. Case in point: on Dec. 2, President Joe Biden took his last overseas trip as president — to Angola. In the 1950s, the U.S. invested in transportation infrastructure in the region, and Biden’s administration is following suit. The U.S. has committed $3 billion to expand a railway that will link mines in Congo and Zambia with an Atlantic port. This expansion is designed to boost export volumes of copper and cobalt, metals needed for green energy technologies.

The history makes clear that looming mineral shortages ought not be a cause for concern. They are a solvable problem, though one that will come at great expense. Even if China restricts access to certain minerals, the U.S. can build alternative supply chains that will ensure the feared shortages never happen. 

Duncan Money is a historian and consultant who works on mining, with a focus on copper.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.