Minerals for War: Strategic Extractivism, the Military-Industrial Complex, and Global Architectures of Domination

This article argues that contemporary governance of critical and strategic minerals is structured by a security rationale that privileges continuity of supply over human security. Although due diligence frameworks have advanced in the control of mineral origin, they remain markedly weak with respect to final destination, especially when materials are incorporated into arms-production chains. Through an integrated reading of the official United States definition of critical minerals, the defense apparatus policy on strategic materials, the OECD Due Diligence Guidance, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the Arms Trade Treaty, the article contends that dominant traceability is ethically incomplete: it monitors the mine, smelter, and refinery, but rarely follows with the same intensity the path of the resource into weapons systems used in contemporary conflicts. The case of the war against Iran in 2026—including the destruction of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab by a U.S. Tomahawk missile, which killed 168 girls between the ages of 7 and 12, according to journalistic investigations and official sources cited by the press, serves as a limiting case that reveals the material continuity between peripheral extraction, industrial transformation, and violence against civilians. The article therefore proposes replacing the restricted logic of "responsible sourcing" with a more demanding principle of responsibility by destination, according to which due diligence must encompass not only the provenance of the resource but also its probable end use whenever foreseeable risks of grave humanitarian harm exist.