The recent elevation of phosphate to the US Critical Minerals List is not a celebration of a resource; it is a forced reckoning with an unavoidable geopolitical reality. The mineral that underpins global food production and fuels the emerging battery economy is concentrated overwhelmingly in one nation: the Kingdom of Morocco. For both Washington and Rabat, this structural dependency demands a strategic alliance defined by cold, hard pragmatism, not diplomatic rhetoric.

The global fertilizer market is intrinsically unstable, prone to manipulation by dominant, politically adversarial producers who have historically weaponized exports to serve their own domestic interests, exporting scarcity and inflation to the world. The only counterweight to this perpetual instability is Morocco’s geologic dominance. Commanding over 70% of the world’s known phosphate rock reserves, Morocco holds the single most critical supply assurance for centuries, a structural monopoly that cannot be diversified away. This concentration of power is both a strategic advantage for Morocco and an acute source of........

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