The Dangerous Allure of Myanmar’s Rare Earths

Early this week, Reuters reported that the Trump administration has been approached with two different proposals to shift U.S. engagement in the four-and-a-half-year Burmese civil war, to access Myanmar’s substantial reserves of rare earths. The former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar, Adam Castillo, held a meeting with Vice President JD Vance’s office and urged the administration to seek an accommodation with the Burmese junta led by coup leader Min Aung Hlaing. Australian economist and former political prisoner and Aung San Suu Kyi advisor Sean Turnell, by contrast, advised the administration to engage more deeply with resistance forces, especially the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), which now controls most of the country’s rare earths production.

The administration has so far shown little interest in engaging deeply with the crisis in Myanmar. It has, however, shown a persistent interest in securing U.S. access to critical minerals, including in war zones like Ukraine. That has led Burma watchers in Washington to worry for months that the rare earths issue could be the trigger for the wrong kind of administration interest in the Burmese civil war. Last week, the Department of the Treasury unexpectedly lifted sanctions on several Burmese entities, including known arms traffickers to the junta, who are still sanctioned by Canada and the United Kingdom. That set off alarm bells that the administration might be exploring rapprochement with Min Aung Hlaing’s regime. Department of the Treasury officials denied any political motivation. The slightly less worrying explanation, then, is that no senior administration official was aware of the impending decision or how damaging it would be. Either way, this suggests that policy entrepreneurs in the administration, focused on accessing rare earths, could try to push outreach to the junta in the future. That would damage both long-term U.S. strategic interests and undermine eventual access to those rare earth deposits.

No Deal with the Devil

There are three simple reasons that outreach to the Burmese junta is the wrong way to go about securing eventual access to rare earths: It would make the logistics of accessing those minerals all but impossible; it would amount to a big bet on the losing side of the civil war; and it would tie the United States’ hopes to a Chinese proxy regime that is likely to prioritize Beijing’s interests.

Myanmar’s rare earths mining is concentrated in Kachin State in the north of the country, where it borders China and India. Nearly the entire state, including the rare earths mines, is under the control of the KIO, which seeks independence from the junta. Prior to the civil war that erupted in early 2021, all of Kachin State’s rare earths exports went over the border to China for processing. Despite sometimes strained relations between the KIO and Beijing, including periodic border closures, that is still the case today. Alternative routes for those rare earths are dicey at best. The mines are bordered on the east by northern Shan State, where China-backed resistance forces control most territory. To the south is Sagaing Region, which has seen the fiercest fighting of the civil war and where most townships are under the control of resistance-aligned People’s Defense Forces. Beyond that are Chin and Arakan (or Rakhine) states, almost entirely under the control of Chin and Arakan ethnic resistance organizations. So there is no viable path to the sea for rare earths exports, and certainly not one controlled by the junta. That leaves the overland route westward to India, where there is limited transportation and zero refining infrastructure. The investments necessary to transport and process in India would be enormous, and very unlikely to happen with the uncertainty caused by the civil war. Those investments could happen someday, but likely not under the junta’s direction.

That brings us to the second problem: The junta is not the likely winner of this civil war. The situation in Myanmar is often dubbed a stalemate, but that is false. The military regime hunkers down in the major cities of Yangon, Mandalay, and Naypyidaw, barely in control of their immediate surroundings. It has steadily lost ground to the disparate resistance forces over the last four and a half years. The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar estimates that the junta controls, at best, 14 percent of the country’s territory. It has lost control of nearly every border crossing and must rely on air and riverine transport to resupply its remaining outposts in otherwise resistance-controlled regions. The regime of Bashar al-Assad controlled more of Syria’s territory in November 2024 than Min Aung Hlaing’s junta does in Myanmar today. Betting on the Burmese junta now would be as bad a decision as the Russians made propping up Assad then. Just because the regime hasn’t fallen quickly doesn’t mean it isn’t falling. 

And finally, if the United States were to help prop up the junta in exchange for future access to rare earths, it would severely undermine long-term U.S. strategic interests. Min Aung Hlaing’s regime has been isolated from the world for four and a half years. In that time, he has, by both necessity and choice turned the junta into a Russian and Chinese proxy. It defies logic to expect a somehow victorious junta to turn its back on the powers that kept it in this fight for so long and betray Beijing by handing over its most bankable natural resource to the United States. The resistance forces, by contrast, are likely to be very open to greater engagement with the United States to reduce overreliance on a Chinese government that supported their oppressor. Gallup has been polling Burmese citizens since 2012 and shows them on average to have the third-highest level of trust in the United States, and the fourth-highest level of distrust in China, among Southeast Asian publics. Washington is much better off betting on that well of public support than it is on a brutal and opportunistic junta.

First Do No Harm

If the U.S. government intends to engage more actively in the crisis in Myanmar, it should do so on the side of the resistance. There is no unified opposition to the junta—the National Unity Government is just one player among many and has failed to consolidate the trust of a critical mass of ethnic resistance organizations and other actors. But the best future for the country is for a truly federal resistance to topple the military regime or force it to the negotiating table. The United States cannot make that happen, but it can message privately and publicly to relevant actors that, should such a unified resistance emerge, it would enjoy greater financial and diplomatic support from Washington, including access to Burmese government funds currently frozen in the United States. That could provide a powerful incentive for the resistance to get serious about negotiating a shared vision of Myanmar’s future. The United States should also restart many of the taps of foreign assistance to resistance actors that had previously been provided by the United States Agency for International Development. Without that assistance, it is increasingly difficult for resistance actors to provide public services and therefore consolidate legitimacy in the areas they govern. The United States should also redouble efforts to convince Myanmar’s neighbors, especially Bangladesh and India, to rethink their stances and engage more productively with the resistance actors that control their borders.

But if the administration is uninterested in more proactive support for the Burmese resistance, it should first adopt a policy of doing no harm. The junta is not winning this war. There is no reason for Washington to make it harder on a resistance that continues to gain ground. And it certainly should not rush to lift sanctions on entities credibly accused of funneling weapons and resources to the military regime.

Gregory B. Poling is a senior fellow and director for the Southeast Asia Program and the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.