Resources reports

National defence group sees resource war

According to the National Strategy information Center (NSIC), Americas economic well-being and its national security are both threatened by the increasing inability of the United States and the West in general to guarantee access to the energy and non-fuel mineral resources upon which our industrial economy is built... We may be entering an era that some future historian will call the Resource War :

rent energy crisis. Former Admiral, Willam C. Mott, executive director of the CENS project, states that Assuring supplies of critical minerals for our industries may be the most important undertaking ever to face (the USA). The report identifies four areas that determine the ability of nations to pursue independent national security policies, or to conduct their collective policies in an alliance, free from external pressures: uninterrupted access to most of the present supplies of resource imports; an adequate quantity of resource imports; security of the trade routes; unimpaired ability to pay for the resource imports.

NSIC, based in New York and Washington, is a long-established national security think tank whose conservative ideology complements the Reagan Administration in new Washington. As a consequence, what NSIC calls the geopolitics of natural resources is now being treated more seriously than in past administration policy-making activities. The NSIC recently established the Council on Economics and National Security (CENS) project which has taken an in-depth look at the resources position of the USA and its allies. Its report A White Paper: The Resource War and the US Business Community: The Case for a Council on Economics and National Security, has been

received with a great deal of interest by the federal government. The white paper paints a fairly grim suggests that the business picture of long-term availability of adequate strategic materials. It points community, through factor(ing) into especially to chromium and cobalt; its bottom line thinking these geopolitical instabilities and ideologies of political considerations, can greatly nations controlling these materials, increase government awareness of the says the report, raise serious questions need to take measures to increase the security of national minerals and about future access to them. The CENS report supports the con- materials resources. cern expressed by conservative politiA. H. Purcell cians who have studied resource Technical Information Project questions, such as Harrison Schmitt, a Washington, DC former astronaut and now a US Senator. Says Schmitt, Not far in the future awaits sudden recognition of a A copy of the white paper is available from materials crisis with the possibility of CENS, Suite 601, 1730 Rhode Island more devastating effects than our cur- Avenue NW, Washington, DC20036, USA.

The Materials Forum -technical programme under way

The Materials Forum was created in the autumn of 1979, pintly, by fourprofessional institutions concerned with materials. This was announced in Resources Policy in December of that year, 1and the background to the formation and the objectives of the Forum were described. Since then, considerable progress has been made, particularly with regard to developing a technical programme.

Harwell and the BNF Metals Technology Centre. The expertise available on the committee covers virtually the whole field of materials - from supply to end-use and disposal-and includes a professor of economics. The Forum is not just concerned with metals - the Plastics and Rubber Institute and the Institute of Ceramics both applied for membership and were admitted in June 1980.

First projects

At the beginning of 1980, a Technical Committee was appointed to inaugurate and manage the technical programme of the Materials Forum. Professor

Four projects were initiated at the J. Nutting was appointed as its first outset by the Technical Committee - a chairman. The membership is made up study of aluminium supply and uses, an of people from industry, the umversi- examination of the recycling of polyties, and research centres such as mers, listing and discussing strategic

RESOURCES POLICY September 1981

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