Op-ed by Barbara Magalhães Teixeira and Jiayi Zhou. Both are researchers at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
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The USA, China and Russia—today’s great powers—have all developed ambitions to access, secure and even capture overseas resources and the associated markets in the name of strategic interests. They have deployed a series of instruments that include well-established channels of economic diplomacy through legitimate investments that provide local development benefits. But, increasingly, violent resource appropriation and territorial control have also become features of the wider great power resource scramble that can be characterized as new mercantilism-driven geopolitics.
The risks associated with this increasingly mercantilist approach are particularly pronounced for resource-rich lower-income countries, which have less leverage and institutional capacity in financial, technological and even military terms to set the conditions of their own resource exploitation. At a time of reduced multilateral safeguards, such countries must balance opportunities to capitalize on this race for raw materials while avoiding the fate of those that have already become its casualties. This essay explores the growing trend towards resource mercantilism among the great powers and lays out some of the resulting perils that face the global rest.
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China has pursued a long-term state-led strategy to secure overseas energy and mineral supplies to fuel its economic growth and industrial development. Chinese overseas investments in and imports from resource-rich lower-income countries have been concentrated in extractive sectors. Concerns have been raised by the potentially military-capable infrastructure and ports that China has constructed in several countries through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which serve China’s combined geostrategic and natural resource interests.
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Russia has been using its oil and gas exports as instruments of political coercion for several years, as well as a way to finance its military aggression abroad. It continues to project power through its commodity exports—not only oil and gas but also agricultural products—while pursuing economic fortification through an import substitution policy in place since at least 2015.
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Russia has attempted to realize this aim [of becoming a major exporter in mineral markets] not only through domestic extraction but also through violent resource appropriation. It has already started integrating Ukrainian territories it has occupied or illegally annexed into its industrial strategies for energy, mineral and food production and export. State actors have engaged in systematic destruction, disruption and even theft in sectors where Ukraine is a competitor for global markets.
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The USA’s stated intention of appropriating Venezuelan oil and gas and its posturing on Greenland’s resources are any indication [of a similar approach of resource mercantilism as Russia's]. There are also concerns about resource-securing motives in China’s activities in disputed territories in the East and South China Seas.
Overseas resource extraction is transactional by nature, but as coercive forms of resource diplomacy are increasingly utilized, this could very plausibly lead to a race to the bottom, as great powers leverage power asymmetries—economic, political and military—to secure resources, potentially at the partner country’s expense.
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The case of Ukraine clearly illustrates today’s great power resource mercantilism, with Russia’s violent resource appropriation on the one hand, and the highly unbalanced 2025 Ukrainian–US minerals deal on the other. The latter was publicly portrayed as an opportunity for Ukraine to secure more foreign investment. However, the implicit threat of losing US security assistance ultimately shaped the deal’s terms, and the few mining concessions that have since been negotiated have privileged the interests of US oligarchs.
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At the same time, resource-rich low-income countries are not entirely without agency. Although the earlier ‘race to the top’ provided more favourable bargaining conditions, competition among external powers can still, in certain cases, create opportunities to renegotiate contracts, diversify partnerships or extract greater fiscal benefits. For example, Ghana, Indonesia, Namibia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe have all used export restrictions to promote domestic processing of minerals, to retain more value within their own economies. Other major mineral exporters in the developing world—including Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Gabon, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Peru and Zambia—have also significantly increased mineral export taxes, mining taxes, royalties, deposits and other fees. In 2024 the DRC also successfully renegotiated elements of the 2008 Sicomines agreement with China.
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Rivalry among external actors [over resources in low-income countries] can still expand the bargaining space available for producer countries. However, such agency depends heavily on institutional capacity—the technical and administrative ability to negotiate contracts, enforce regulations and manage revenues. In addition, while domestic processing does help to retain value within producer states, it does not resolve and can even exacerbate many of the related environmental and social challenges of extractive activities. Meanwhile, official development assistance (ODA), which supported institutional capacity-building, the promotion of inclusive development and the strengthening of ESG-related safeguards, is seeing dramatic cuts.
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In this context, what precautions might be realistic for resource-rich low-income countries? Maintaining diversified geopolitical partnerships can help to preserve bargaining space and strategic flexibility, but in a more heavily securitized and resource mercantilist world, the options to do so may be increasingly limited. Producer states can strengthen their hand through actions at the domestic level. Reinforcing domestic institutional capacity—particularly in contract negotiation, revenue management and regulatory oversight—can reduce vulnerability to external pressure. Greater transparency in resource governance can limit elite capture, improve accountability and increase local development gains.
In addition, actors such as the EU are still formulating their own strategies in the face of great power resource mercantilism. If they are interested in safeguarding a more inclusive, equitable global order, they should continue to support multilateral, rules-based and sustainable development-centred approaches to the governance of natural resources.
