The reason behind this is that the world race has provided economic policy with a different meaning. Innovative planning in industry, defense production and energy transition now revolve around copper, the rare earths, graphite, nickel, cobalt and other strategic inputs. Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 by the International Energy Agency and the March 2025 order by the White House on American mineral production shows how far this has been accomplished. The January 2026 declaration of the US Trump administration regarding processed critical minerals and an ultimate list of critical minerals published in 2025 by the US Geological Survey as well as a recent analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations also point in the correct direction: The United States is beginning to view mineral security as national security.

This is what makes Pakistan greater as compared to the same two years back. In April 2025, Reuters said Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a meeting with Pakistani foreign minister and talked about critical minerals. In August 2025, Reuters once more cited Washington being interested in having cooperation with Pakistan around critical minerals and hydrocarbons. Outreach has been conducted as well at State Department about the mining opportunities in Pakistan. Most importantly, we have the Pakistan minerals conference that drew the attention of US, China and the Gulf and it is hard to agree that Pakistan has entered the American minerals debate.

Nevertheless, policy argument is still trailing behind the realities on the ground. In Baluchistan, the province in which the greatest importance is taken in this tale, extraction is not mere. Whether an external force can inject huge sums of money in an area of an ongoing conflict without understanding that geology and security are now a single entity. Potential of minerals in Pakistan can be immense, yet mineral wealth does not drift. It needs roads, electric power, usury, environmental permits and above all some semblance of political order. Washington cannot want the copper and forget about the war.

The point of beginning is the market. This is evidenced in the 2025 prognosis given by the IEA that shows the demand in fundamental energy minerals, especially the grid, storage, and transport associated ones, will continue to be on the rise. In the meantime, the concentration is the primary problem. China remains the dominant player in the refining and processing and that is something still sending panic to the Washington based policymakers. The domestic acceleration, trade action and diversification of the supply chain are some of the responses that the white house has employed. This does not mean that the United States is able to replace China in the nearest future. The fact that Washington is seeking credible external partners does not indicate otherwise.

The prospect of Pakistan is not just an alternative, and a less severe alternative than the assumptions of many analysts in America. The reserves of the country as far as the minerals are concerned have been estimated to be often worth trillions and even the thrust of investment by Pakistan itself has thrown that estimate into the limelight of the debate. What is more important than the figure in the headline is the business fact that Reko Diq is a huge undeveloped copper and gold projects in the world. The mine is no longer a hypothetical concept as explained in April 2025 feasibility update given by Barrick. Reuters has reported projected free cash flow in the tens of billions of dollars, and another report by Reuters has detailed much external financing and a gradual development schedule that would first produce by the end of 2028. In December 2025, the US embassy in Islamabad declared that the US Export Import bank funded the project at 1.25 billion dollars. The IFC and the ADB have not been left behind either to render significant assistance.

They are not symbolic movements. They prove that Pakistan has overcome some important stumbling block in the minds of America. Washington is no longer talking in general terms of cooperating in the future. It is even beginning to fund a real project with real money. This is the reason why the surrounding security of Balochistan is even more significant, not lesser. When a strategic financing of a giant mining venture by the United States is conditional upon it, the instability of the neighboring area no longer remains a distant Pakistani matter. It is made into an American strategic exposure.

The importance of Pakistan is not limited to one mine (Reko Diq being the flagship), however. It is the time and scale combination with the geographical. Pakistan is geographically at the crossroads of South Asia, the Arabian Sea, west of China, and trade routes which theoretically could have connected Central Asia with the seaborne trade. China is familiar with the value of this geography. In February 2025, Reuters reported that Beijing and Islamabad had settled to deepen their cooperation in the infrastructure and mining domain along with creation of Gwadar port. Chinese interest in Pakistan is broad based and institutionalized.

United States enters the scene later and not so privileged. It is exactly due to this that it should be wary of the kind of policy that it adopts. A purely mine finance transactional strategy will be too shallow to become a success. Washington must be able to access beyond the extraction point in case it wants to enjoy strategic access to the Pakistani minerals. It must consider security of transport connectivity, permanence of the nearby infrastructure and political sustainability of the project internally, in Pakistan.

© Eurasia Review