US Senator Lindsey Graham: Ukraine sits on 'trillion dollars worth of minerals that could be good for our economy'

Standing with Zelensky in Kiev, US Senator Lindsey Graham said the West must send Ukraine more arms because “they’re sitting on a trillion dollars worth of minerals that could be good for our economy"

US Senator Lindsey Graham has argued that Washington must support Ukraine because of its lucrative natural resources.

During a visit to Kiev in September, Graham published a video standing next to Ukrainian leader Zelensky, in which the US senator said, "They're sitting on a trillion dollars worth of minerals that could be good to our economy".

"They just need weapons", Graham implored, calling for more arms shipments to Kiev.

The US senator added that Ukraine is "trying to stop the Russians, so we don't have to fight them".

Zelensky expressed gratitude for the "bipartisan support" he has received in Washington.

Graham led a US Congressional delegation to Ukraine in September. He was joined by Senators Ben Cardin and Roger Marshall and Representatives Joe Wilson, William Timmons, and Russell Fry.

According to a readout from the Ukrainian president's office, the "key priorities" discussed with the US Congress members included "obtaining additional air defense systems and missiles for them, as well as expanding training missions for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighters".

This is not the first time that Lindsey Graham has publicly salivated over Ukraine's plentiful natural resources.

In an interview on CBS in June, the US senator said Ukraine is "sitting on a gold mine”.

“They’re sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine”, Graham stressed. “They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China”.

“This is a very big deal, how Ukraine ends. Let’s help them win a war we can’t afford to lose. Let’s find a solution to this war. But they’re sitting on a gold mine. To give Putin $10 or $12 trillion of critical minerals that he will share with China is ridiculous”, he stated.

The Washington Post reported in 2022 that “Ukraine harbors some of the world’s largest reserves of titanium and iron ore, fields of untapped lithium and massive deposits of coal. Collectively, they are worth tens of trillions of dollars”.

According to the newspaper, Ukraine has “myriad other reserves, including stores of natural gas, oil and rare earth minerals — essential for certain high-tech components — that could hamper Western Europe’s search for alternatives to imports from Russia and China”.

US hopes Ukraine can weaken role of China and Russia in critical mineral supply chains

It is not only Western corporations that want to invest in exploiting Ukraine's natural resources, but also US policymakers who want to diversify their supply of critical minerals.

Due to decades of strategic investments, China dominates much of the global supply chain for critical minerals. This has angered Washington.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm explained that critical minerals constitute “one of the pieces of the supply chain that we’re very concerned about in the United States. We do not want to be over-reliant on countries whose values we may not share".

The Joe Biden administration has imposed sanctions and export restrictions on China, and dedicated many billions of dollars to promoting an industrial policy that boosts US access to rare earth elements and critical minerals like lithium and cobalt, which are needed to manufacture advanced technologies, especially renewable energy tech.

Washington, Brussels, and London hope Ukraine can help reduce their dependency on China.

As Geopolitical Economy Report previously documented, the Code of Laws of the United States of America was revised in 2021, and a new section was added titled “Cooperation Between the United States and Ukraine Regarding the Titanium Industry”. This reads (emphasis added):

It is the policy of the United States to engage with the Government of Ukraine on cooperation in the titanium industry as a potential alternative to Chinese and Russian sources on which the United States and Europe currently depend.

Foreign intervention is 100 times more likely in countries with oil and other strategic resources

A 2015 academic study by Western scholars found that foreign intervention in a country's civil war is 100 times more likely if that nation has large oil reserves and other natural resources.

Summarizing their peer-reviewed paper "'Oil above Water': Economic Interdependence and Third-party Intervention”, the academics wrote (emphasis added):

One of these studies provided statistical evidence that Central Intelligence Agency covert operations during the Cold War resulted in increased imports of United States goods from target countries, without the same holding true for exports. Another, prepared by us and co-author Leandro Elia, demonstrated that US military assistance increased non-military bilateral trade flows with the recipient country.

“Oil Above Water” is the first statistical analysis to explore whether oil is a motivating factor for military interventions in ongoing civil wars, and confirms the suspicions of the public in this area. We found that oil production and known oil reserves are central factors motivating third-party military interventions. More specifically, we demonstrated that the higher the quantities of oil produced and/or owned by a country at civil war, the higher the likelihood of third-party intervention. Moreover, and in accordance with our predictions, we found that the tighter the oil market is, the higher the likelihood of third-party intervention. In other words, in periods where world oil production is concentrated in the hands of fewer countries, civil wars in oil-producing countries are more likely to attract foreign military involvement.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we have provided statistical evidence that the likelihood of a nation intervening militarily is positively tied to the quantities of oil imported by that specific country. While other factors also play a role, intervention is approximately 100 times more likelywhen the country at war has a high value of reserves and the intervening country has high oil imports than when the country at war has no oil reserves and the potential intervener has high oil exports.

US eyed Afghanistan's $1 trillion worth of minerals

During the 20-year US-NATO military occupation of Afghanistan, Washington also sought to exploit the lucrative natural resources there.

In 2017, Reuters reported that "U.S. President Donald Trump is eyeing Afghanistan's mineral wealth”.

A study conducted by the US government in 2010 estimated that Afghanistan had close to $1 trillion in minerals.

"As well as deposits of gold, silver and platinum, Afghanistan has significant quantities of iron ore, uranium, zinc, tantalum, bauxite, coal, natural gas and significant copper - a particular draw given the dearth of rich new copper mines globally", wrote Reuters.

The news agency said Afghanistan had "the potential to become 'the Saudi Arabia of lithium'".

The New York Times also reported in 2017 that "Trump has discussed the country’s mineral deposits with President Ashraf Ghani, who promoted mining as an economic opportunity in one of their first conversations".

According to the newspaper, "Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who is informally advising Mr. Trump on Afghanistan, is also looking into ways to exploit the country’s minerals".

Feinberg owned the US military contractor DynCorp, which sought contracts to protect Afghanistan's mines, so foreign corporations could profit from its resources.

But it wasn't just the Trump administration that wanted Afghanistan's minerals; this was bipartisan in Washington.

The New York Times noted, "In 2006, the George W. Bush administration conducted aerial surveys of the country to map its mineral resources. Under President Barack Obama, the Pentagon set up a task force to try to build a mining industry in Afghanistan".