《外交政策》6月11日刊登编辑基思·约翰逊和拉拉·赛里格曼文章《中国如何封锁美国国防》
文: Keith Johnson & Lara Seligman
译：Kris
美国总统特朗普经常说，在中美贸易战里中国可能失去的比美国多得多，但批评人士指出，美国有个要害是特朗普政府没法防守的：对关键材料的掌控为中国提供了强大的杠杆，使其得以控制其主要战略对手的战争能力。
美国军火库里的每一种先进武器——从战斧巡航导弹到F-35战斗机，再到配备宙斯盾的驱逐舰、巡洋舰等各式舰只——都绝对依赖于用稀土元素制造的零部件，包括永磁体、特种合金等关键物品，它们几乎全部产自中国。更令人担忧的或许是，如果美国在叙利亚、伊朗或其他地方介入冲突，就必须迅速补充智能炸弹和精确制导弹药，而它们的长期供应基本依赖于中国对持续生产此类物资的默许。
稀土在美军制导和控制系统中的应用
5月下旬，北京方面放出风声中国可能切断美国的稀土供应，这个威胁至今没有消除。上周末，中国官方媒体称，可能将美国国防工业所需的高端稀土制成品纳入中国限制技术出口清单，这种限制本身是在回应美国向通信巨头华为施压的做法。中国《环球时报》的一篇社论颇有针对性地提到了稀土加工，它写道：“有能力通过一些技术管制对美国企业的供应链完整造成冲击。”
钍与稀土元素咨询公司（ThREE Consulting）是一家专注于安全问题的稀土咨询公司，其创始人詹姆斯·肯尼迪表示：“中国实际上已经改变了我们美国管理战争的方式，还可能改变战争的结果。”
肯尼迪说，中美新冷战的迹象已经浮现，美国国家安全官员把中国看作一个势均力敌的竞争者和战略对手，而美国的作战能力在很大程度上却掌握在中国手里。
他表示：“稀土实际上是一种霸权触发器。如果美国陷入冲突，它使用的大部分先进武器是中国供应的，也就是说中国能够决定冲突的结果，这可能导致霸权转移。”
詹姆斯·肯尼迪在对比中美日稀土专利数量
稀土元素是各种先进民用技术的关键成分，比如手机、电动汽车和可再生能源设备。它们对国防的重要程度更加不言而喻。美国国会研究服务中心2013年的报告显示，每造一艘弗吉尼亚级攻击核潜艇需要9200磅（4173公斤）稀土材料，每架F-35需要用920磅（417公斤）。
国防工业与大多数其他行业不同，不需要低端稀土材料。稀土虽然名字有个“稀”字，但其实世界各地储量都不少。然而国防工业最需要的是高度加工的稀土产品，特别是永磁体，而其生产者基本只有日本和中国。日本2010年和2011年曾受中国稀土禁运影响，尽管此后它在一定程度上降低了对中国供应商的依赖，但其稀土价值链仍与中国紧密相连，几乎没有能力提高产量在满足其国内需求的同时照顾到美国。
最高端的稀土产品是高功率磁材料，它应用于智能炸弹和巡航导弹的制导系统，对宙斯盾的导弹跟踪和安全通信也不可或缺。
高功率钕磁铁
肯尼迪表示，美国国防工业对其他许多稀土产品也十分依赖，包括用于喷气发动机的耐高温涂层和合金以及用于机身的隐形涂层，所有先进的瞄准系统，先进的雷达和声纳系统，甚至还包括夜视镜。
多年以来，五角大楼一直努力想要克服重要稀土材料给国防工业基础带来的脆弱性。历届美国政府都试图重振盛极一时的美国稀土行业，储备关键材料，以及安排替代供应商，但迄今收效甚微。
中国经常补贴其稀土公司，以成本价或低于成本价出售，这使得私营公司很难涉足这个行业。
能代替中国提供稀土矿石的供应商比比皆是，但中国在稀土加工产品上占据了统治地位，而这些产品才是美国国防工业所需要的。美国国防部对到底需要哪些关键材料缺乏明确定义，其储备的关键材料也往往不是可用的形式。
2016年，美国政府问责办公室得出的结论是：“美国国防部没有全面的、统一的方法来确定哪些稀土对国家安全最重要。一旦发生供应中断，缺乏应对措施来确保持续、可靠的来源。”
在白宫要求之下，2018年五角大楼发布了评估报告，清楚地表达了美军方对稀土问题的担忧，该报告指责中国故意利用其对稀土矿的垄断来挤压美国国防工业基础。该报告特别警告说，中国是美军许多种弹药和导弹所使用的某些关键材料的唯一来源或主要供应商。例如一种帮助导弹制导的小玩意儿叫做钕-铁-硼永磁体，过去美国自己就能生产，而今几乎全部靠中国制造，美国完全不生产了。
《美国制造与国防工业基础和供应链弹性评估与强化》报告
报告发现，在多数情况下，这种材料缺乏替代品，而在另一些情况下，测试和鉴定替代品的时间和成本高得令人“望而生畏”。
报告总结道：“一些关键材料和技术对于美国国家安全具有战略意义，而它们的供应受到来自中国的重大且不断增长的风险。”随着中美贸易冲突升温，这种依赖性凸显出美国潜在的国家安全漏洞。
报告称，“美国制造与国防工业基础依赖战略竞争对手提供关键货物、服务和商品，而中国的贸易主导地位及其以贸易作为软实力武器的意愿增加了美国面临的风险。”
美国前国防官员强调，尽管这种潜在的脆弱性多年来备受关注，但目前尚不清楚是否有解决方案。
曾任五角大楼高官的美国战略与国际研究中心国防工业倡议组主任安德鲁·亨特说：“稀土元素对国防应用至关重要，它们的功能性没有简单的替代品，所以我们绝对是需要它们的。如果我们的稀土供应被切断，国防工业基础将受到沉重打击。”
亨特表示，中国近十年前的稀土出口禁运曾一度导致价格飙升，但仅造成暂时性干扰，所以许多五角大楼官员寄希望于市场解决方案。但他认为：“我觉得市场方案仍然可行，但如果政府不采取更多干预措施，我对其未来的可行性无法保持乐观。”
尽管如此，目前还不清楚北京方面是否真的会切断美国获取某些关键矿物的渠道。 5月底，中国《环球时报》主编胡锡进表示，政府不是没有考虑这个想法，但可能不会立即采取行动。中美双方都知道，稀土断供将是极具挑衅性的一步棋——特别考虑到中国过去十年来一直试图重新成为重要稀土材料的可靠供应商。
胡锡进在推特上写道：“我认为中国政府不会立即这样做，但它正在认真评估这样做的必要性。”
老胡的推文
自邓小平时代以来，中国一直高度重视稀土及其在先进技术领域的重要性。邓小平曾把稀土对中国的重要性与控制石油供应对中东的重要性相提并论，他指出：“中东有石油，中国有稀土。”。
中国稀土产业的主导地位对军用技术奋起直追提供了支持与配合。海湾战争展示了美国军用技术的先进性，美军的智能炸弹彻底改变了现代战争。美国前国防部常务副部长罗伯特·沃克及其同僚格雷格·格兰特在为新美国安全中心撰写的关于中国“军事-技术抵消战略”新报告指出，海湾战争使中国领导人坚信必须在技术上迎头赶上，要对美国军事力量构成可信威胁，这也是过去30年来中国一直在做的事。
然而，在上世纪60年代到80年代时，主导稀土开采和加工的曾经是美国。但由于稀土是个难以大幅牟利的小众行业，再加上中国较为宽松的环境标准（稀土往往与放射性物质混合在一起）使其在开采方面占据优势，美国的主导地位开始动摇。
1980年，美国修改了处理放射性元素钍的监管政策，禁止传统矿业公司在开采铁、锌等原材料的同时对伴生的钍元素加以利用，迫使它们将稀土矿处理掉。这对美国稀土行业造成了沉重打击，再加上中国对稀土提供补贴，保持宽松政策以抢占市场，种种因素叠加在一起，带来了一场彻底的转变：作为现代经济和现代军队关键组成部分的稀土，掌握权易手了。
稀土主导权转向中国的同时，另一场军事革命也在进行中，美军的高科技武器越来越多地采用那些难以获取的材料。以美国军火库中最常见的战斧巡航导弹为例，如果得不到由中国控制的关键材料，战斧导弹就无法读取地形并找到目标。
肯尼迪表示，高超音速导弹、定向能武器等下一代武器以及量子计算，都可能更加依赖高度加工的稀土材料。
可能应用定向能武器的场景
尽管五角大楼储备了多种关键材料和稀土，但主要是原始或中间形式，而不是国防平台所需要的高度加工的成品形式。例如，稀土氧化物必须进一步加工或精炼才能形成金属、合金，并最终制成永磁体用于导弹制导系统和M1艾布拉姆斯系列主战坦克的导航系统。美国加工稀土的能力很差，重建需要许多年时间。
肯尼迪说：“关键材料储备就是个笑话。”
特朗普政府和许多议员正在极力重启美国国内稀土开采，美国商务部本月发布报告呼吁美国解决对关键矿物的进口依赖问题。
美国国防部最近向国会申请联邦资金，用于支持稀土矿物生产。加州的芒廷帕斯矿山是美国目前唯一运营的稀土设施。值得注意的是，据路透社报道，中国的盛和资源控股股份有限公司持有该矿山的少数股权，该矿山所有者MP材料公司每年将加州开采的约5万吨浓缩矿运往中国加工。
据路透社报道，至少有三家美国公司计划开设稀土加工厂，其中位于芒廷帕斯的那一家将于明年开工，每年稀土产量约为5000吨。
加州莫哈维沙漠的芒廷帕斯（Mountain Pass）稀土矿山
但即使美国开设更多矿山和加工厂，可能也难以削弱中国对从矿山到磁体的整个生产链的控制。即使高调如莱纳斯公司，其在得克萨斯建立稀土分离工厂的举措也无法解决五角大楼的问题，因为稀土氧化物仍然不得不运往海外，才能制成合金或永磁体。
多年来一直有人建议美国政府允许技术公司成立合作社——这也是肯尼迪提倡的办法。它将提供一条龙式的稀土服务：从开采、分离、加工，到制成先进的金属与磁体等，而无需担心困扰该行业数十年的连续破产问题。
众议院的部分共和党人在敦促政府尽快走出这一步，白宫可以通过签发行政命令来实现这些措施。
但就目前而言，美国的稀土困境仍然没有解决。
How China Could Shut Down America’s Defenses
The Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Hawaii prepared to moor at the historic submarine piers at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on June 6. Each Virginia-class submarine uses nearly five tons of rare-earth materials.
President Donald Trump has often argued that China has much more to lose than the United States in a trade war, but critics say his administration has failed to address a major U.S. vulnerability: Beijing maintains powerful leverage over the warmaking capability of its main strategic rival through its control of critical materials.
Every advanced weapon in the U.S. arsenal—from Tomahawk missiles to the F-35 fighter jet to Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers and everything in between—is absolutely reliant on components made using rare-earth elements, including critical items such as permanent magnets and specialized alloys that are almost exclusively made in China. Perhaps more worrisome is that the long-term U.S. supply of smart bombs and guided munitions that would have to be replenished in a hurry in the event of U.S. conflict in Syria, Iran, or elsewhere are essentially reliant on China’s acquiescence in their continued production.
Chinese threats to cut off U.S. supplies of rare earths, first floated by Beijing in late May, haven’t abated. Over the weekend, Chinese state media suggested that high-end, finished products using rare earths that the U.S. defense industry requires could be included in China’s technology-export restrictions, themselves a response to U.S. pressure on the telecoms giant Huawei. “China is capable of impacting the US supply chain through certain technical controls,” said an editorial in China’s Global Times that pointedly referred to processed rare earths.
“China has effectively altered the way we manage war, and potentially the outcome,” said James Kennedy, the founder of ThREE Consulting, a rare-earths consultancy focused on security implications.
For all the hints of a new cold war with China, Kennedy said, U.S. warfighting capabilities are to a large extent in the hands of the one country that has come to be seen by U.S. national security officials as a peer competitor and a strategic rival.
“Rare earths are actually a hegemonic trigger. If the United States gets into a conflict, China is supplying the majority of the upscale weapons,” he said. “China can determine the outcome of the conflict, and that could result in a hegemonic shift.”
If rare-earth elements have become the key ingredient in all sorts of advanced civilian technology such as cell phones, electric cars, and renewable energy equipment, they’re doubly important for defense. Each Virginia-class attack submarine needs 9,200 pounds of rare-earth materials, while each F-35 needs 920 pounds, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report.
The defense industry, unlike most other sectors, doesn’t need low-end rare-earth materials that—contrary to their name—are actually commonly found in many places around the world. Rather, what the defense industry most needs are highly processed rare-earth products, especially permanent magnets, that are essentially made only in Japan and China. And while Japan, itself stung by a Chinese rare-earth embargo in 2010 and 2011, has made some progress emancipating itself from reliance on Chinese suppliers, its rare-earth value chain is still deeply enmeshed with China, leaving it with little ability to ramp up production volumes to bail out U.S. consumers while still meeting its own domestic needs.
The highest-end products are high-powered magnets, which are what make the guidance systems on smart bombs and cruise missiles work and what runs Aegis missile-tracking and secure communications.
But there are a host of other rare-earth products that the defense industry relies on, Kennedy said. Those include temperature-resistant coatings and alloys for jet engines and stealth coatings for fuselages, all advanced targeting systems, advanced radar and sonar, and even night-vision goggles.
The Pentagon has been grappling with the importance—and vulnerability—of rare earths in the defense industrial base for years. Successive administrations have sought to either revitalize the once-booming U.S. rare-earths industry, stockpile critical materials, or line up alternative suppliers—but with little success so far.
China often subsidizes its rare-earth firms and sells at or below cost, which makes it very difficult for private firms to make a go in the business. Alternative supplies of rare-earth ore abound, but China has a dominant position in the processed rare-earth products that the defense industry needs. The Department of Defense has no clear definition of just what critical materials are needed, and defense stockpiles of critical materials often are not in usable form.
“DOD has no comprehensive, department-wide approach to determine which rare earths are critical to national security, and how to deal with potential supply disruptions to ensure continued, reliable access,” concluded the Government Accountability Office in 2016.
The Pentagon most clearly outlined its concerns in a 2018 review ordered by the White House, which accused China of deliberately leveraging its monopoly on these minerals to squeeze the U.S. defense industrial base. The report specifically warned that China is the sole source or primary supplier for a number of critical materials used in munitions and missiles. For example, the United States used to make neodymium ion boron permanent magnets, the gizmo that helps guide guided missiles to their targets; today, they are almost all made in China, and none are manufactured in the United States.
In many cases there is no alternative for this material, and in others the time and cost to test and qualify alternatives would be “prohibitive,” the report found.
“China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials and technologies deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security,” the report concluded. And it underscored the potential national security vulnerabilities as Washington’s trade war with Beijing heated up.
“China’s trade dominance and its willingness to use trade as a weapon of soft power increases the risks America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base faces in relying on a strategic competitor for critical goods, services, and commodities,” the report said.
Former defense officials stress that despite years of attention to the potential vulnerability, it’s not clear that the United States yet has a solution.
“Rare-earth elements are critical for defense applications, and there are no easy alternatives for their functionalities, so we absolutely need them,” said Andrew Hunter, the director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior Pentagon official. “It would be a major blow to the defense industrial base if we were cut off from rare earths.”
Having weathered one Chinese embargo on rare-earth exports nearly a decade ago, which led to price spikes but only temporary disruptions, many Pentagon officials put their faith in market solutions, Hunter said. “I sense that still holds, but I’m not sanguine that it will remain that way without more government intervention,” he said.
Still, it is far from clear that Beijing will make good on implicit threats to cut off U.S. access to certain critical minerals. Hu Xijin, the editor of the Global Times tabloid, which is owned by the Chinese Communist Party, said in late May that the government was considering the idea but cautioned that it may not act right away. Such a curtailment would be seen in Beijing and Washington as an extremely provocative step—especially after China has spent the last decade trying to rebuild its reputation as a reliable supplier of critical rare earths.
“I think Chinese government won’t do this immediately,” Hu wrote on Twitter, “but it’s seriously evaluating the need to do so.”
China has had a laser focus on rare earths and their importance to advanced technologies since the Deng Xiaoping years—the former Chinese leader reportedly likened the leverage it gave Beijing to the Middle East’s control of oil supplies.
And that industrial dominance has come to complement China’s breakneck race to match the U.S. military’s technological dominance, put on explosive display during the Gulf War, when smart bombs revolutionized modern warfare. That development convinced Chinese leaders they would have to catch up technologically to pose a credible threat to U.S. military might, and Beijing has spent the last 30 years doing just that, noted former U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and his former Pentagon colleague Greg Grant in a new study for the Center for a New American Security on China’s own “military-technical offset.”
It didn’t used to be this way. From the 1960s into the 1980s, the United States dominated both the mining and processing of rare earths. But that started to change, partly because of challenging economics in what is still a niche industry, and partly because China’s lax environmental standards give it an advantage in the dirty business of extracting the stuff, which is often mixed with radioactive material.
One important blow to the U.S. industry was a 1980 regulatory change regarding the handling of thorium, a radioactive element, that drove conventional miners of iron, zinc, and other raw materials—once the source of most rare-earth production—to dispose of rare-earth ores rather than use them. Combined with China’s state subsidies, lax standards, and desire to corner the market, it amounted to a wholesale shift in who controlled what would become one of the key building blocks of the modern economy—and modern militaries.
The shift of rare-earth dominance to China happened to coincide with a revolution in military affairs, where high-tech weapons using ever more difficult-to-acquire materials became the go-to arrows in the U.S. quiver. Tomahawk missiles, for example, are about the most ubiquitous and most used weapon in the U.S. arsenal, but they can’t read terrain and find their targets without the critical materials now controlled by China.
Next-generation weapons will likely be even more reliant on highly processed rare-earth materials, Kennedy said, including hypersonic missiles, directed-energy weapons, and even quantum computing.
The Pentagon does maintain a stockpile of lots of different critical materials and rare earths—but mostly in raw or intermediate form, not in the highly processed finished form that defense platforms actually require. Rare-earth oxides, for example, still must be further processed or refined into metals, alloys, and eventually the permanent magnets that run guidance systems for missiles or navigation systems for American Abrams battle tanks. The United States has very little rare-earth processing ability, and it would take years to rebuild it.
“The critical materials stockpile is a joke,” Kennedy said.
The Trump administration and many lawmakers are redoubling efforts to restart domestic rare-earth mining, and the Department of Commerce this month released a report calling for the United States to address its reliance on imported critical minerals.
The Defense Department recently asked Congress for federal funds to bolster domestic production of these minerals. The Mountain Pass mine in California is currently the only operating U.S. rare-earths facility. Notably, China’s Shenghe Resources Holding Co. is a minority investor, and MP Materials, the owner of Mountain Pass, ships the roughly 50,000 tons of concentrate it extracts from California each year to China to be processed, according to Reuters.
At least three U.S.-based companies are planning to open rare-earth processing plants, including one at Mountain Pass mine set to open next year that will reportedly produce about 5,000 tons of rare earths a year, Reuters reported.
But more mines and intermediate processing facilities likely won’t blunt China’s control of the whole production chain—from mine to magnet. Even highly touted announcements, such as Lynas Corp.’s decision to build a rare-earth separation plant in Texas, don’t solve the Pentagon’s problem, because the oxides must still be shipped overseas to be turned into alloys or permanent magnets.
One possible solution that has been rattling around Washington for years, which Kennedy advocates, is to allow technology firms to create a cooperative. That would be a way to provide soup-to-nuts rare-earth services: mining the stuff, separating it, processing it, and finally turning it into advanced metals, magnets, and more, without risking the serial bankruptcies that have plagued the sector for decades.
Some House Republicans have been urging the administration to take such a step, and the White House could issue an executive order essentially dictating the same measures.
But for now, the United States is still left without an answer to its rare-earth dilemma.
(End)
