A recent column in Forbes, entitled “New U.S. Minerals Stockpile Creates Opportunities in Myanmar,” argues that Washington should pivot from sanctioning Myanmar’s junta to “structured engagement” built around critical minerals and a new US stockpile.
It portrays Myanmar as having “completed the final phase of its 2026 electoral cycle” and on the verge of forming a flawed but functional civilian government led by a military-aligned party. That framing is factually incorrect and strategically dangerous.
Myanmar is not emerging from an electoral cycle; it is trapped in a nationwide war triggered by the 2021 coup, with resistance forces making significant gains and the junta steadily losing territory, legitimacy and control. There has been no credible nationwide vote capable of resolving the constitutional crisis.
ASEAN has explicitly refused to send observers to the junta’s three-stage “election” and, by that decision, has said it will not certify the process, while the UN and rights groups have condemned it as a ploy to legitimize military rule through proxies. To suggest that this amounts to a completed electoral cycle is to launder a coup regime into an acceptable partner.
The Forbes article gets one big thing right: critical minerals are now at the heart of global competition, and the United States has launched “Project Vault,” a multibillion-dollar effort to stockpile key inputs for clean energy, defense and high-tech manufacturing.
Myanmar’s heavy rare‑earth deposits, especially in Kachin and northern Shan states, are already deeply embedded in China-centered supply chains. But the conclusion that follows—that America should work with the junta to secure its own supply and release frozen Burmese assets to finance US mining equipment—rests on a series of convenient fictions.
First, Myanmar’s rare earths and other minerals are not operating in a normal commercial environment. They sit inside a conflict economy characterized by land grabs, militia and military control, and severe environmental destruction.
Investigations show that China-based firms have expanded rare‑earth mining in Kachin and Shan by partnering with militias that lease mines, provide security and tax exports, turning militia-held enclaves into major suppliers of dysprosium, terbium and other heavy rare earths for China.
The notion that Washington can now insert itself into this ecosystem, via the junta, and somehow turn it into a responsible, rules-based supply chain is wishful if not fantastical thinking.
Second, the proposal to repurpose over US$1 billion in frozen Myanmar sovereign assets in New York to buy US‑made mining equipment for use inside Myanmar is presented as clever financial engineering at no cost to American taxpayers. In practice, it would channel contested state assets into capitalizing a junta‑linked extractive sector.
Those reserves were blocked under Executive Order 14014 and related authorities precisely to prevent coup leaders from accessing Myanmar’s foreign assets after the 2021 coup and suspension of democracy. US officials have already intervened once to stop the junta from emptying a roughly US$1 billion account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Unlocking those funds to underwrite junta‑linked mining would not just contradict the spirit of EO 14014. It would also collide with the direction set by Congress in the 2022 Burma Act and the more recent BRAVE Burma Act, which mandate support for pro‑democracy forces and targeted pressure on the junta and its foreign enablers as the core of US policy.
This is where the Forbes piece intersects with a bigger strategic mistake: treating Myanmar as a minerals opportunity to be managed, rather than a war whose outcome will help determine the balance of power across mainland Southeast Asia—and where US lawmakers have already given the administration powerful tools to act.
Stalemate is China’s design
China’s approach to Myanmar is not passive hedging; it is deliberate management of a controlled stalemate.
Beijing provides enough diplomatic and economic support to prevent the junta from collapsing, ensuring continuity for the China–Myanmar Economic Corridor, oil and gas pipelines, hydropower dams, rare earths, copper and tin concessions and potential deep‑water port access on the Bay of Bengal.
At the same time, Chinese officials and proxies engage ethnic armed organizations and local powerbrokers along key borders and transit routes, mediating or pressuring whenever resistance forces gain too much ground in areas central to Chinese interests. The result is a fragmented Myanmar that remains weak and dependent while China’s leverage over strategic minerals, infrastructure, and corridors steadily grows.
For Beijing, this is the ideal outcome: maximum access at minimal cost, no unified authority strong enough to revisit existing deals, and a veto over any political settlement that might tilt the country toward a more balanced foreign policy.
Russia and Iran help sustain this stalemate militarily. Moscow supplies advanced weapons, training and political cover, showcasing the junta as a client that can outlast Western pressure.
Tehran, through a shadow fleet of tankers and sanctions‑evading routes, has quietly delivered large volumes of jet fuel and precursor chemicals since late 2024, fueling a brutal air campaign that has struck hundreds of civilian targets. Without these inputs, the junta’s air power and heavy‑weapons edge would erode rapidly.
This is the framework into which any US–junta “minerals engagement” would plug itself. Far from balancing China, it would legitimize and stabilize the core pillar of Beijing’s design: a junta that never fully wins, never fully loses, and never leaves.
If the US wants a genuinely “America First” policy, it does not need to invent one from scratch. It has two powerful instruments already on the books.
The Burma Act, folded into the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, sets out a clear strategy: expand targeted sanctions on junta officials, cronies, and military‑owned enterprises; support the National Unity Government (NUG), ethnic resistance organizations, and civil society; and provide humanitarian assistance through non‑regime channels.
The BRAVE Burma Act—“Burma’s Resistance and Voiceless Empowerment”—goes further by emphasizing support for democratic resistance and measures to counter the junta’s international enablers.
Taken together, these laws give the administration a mandate to treat the junta as the problem, not a partner; channel assistance to resistance‑aligned governance structures, including local administrations that are beginning to emerge in areas the military has lost; and tighten sanctions on those providing arms, fuel, financing and technology that sustain the junta’s war machine.
In other words, Congress has already chosen a side—and it is not the side the Forbes article is urging the White House to “re‑engage.”
Resistance serves America First
There is an alternative that is both more consistent with American values and more realistic in strategic terms: a decisive victory for Myanmar’s resistance, supported by full implementation of the Burma Act and BRAVE Burma Act. This is not idealism. It is the only outcome that structurally reduces Chinese, Russian, and Iranian leverage over mainland Southeast Asia.
Resistance forces and their political counterparts have made significant military and political gains over the past year. Large swaths of territory are now under resistance or mixed control; in key areas of Kachin, Chin, Shan, and Sagaing, junta positions have collapsed or been pushed back.
Recruitment into the military has plummeted, defections have increased and the regime is increasingly reliant on airstrikes and local militias rather than regular ground forces. At the political level, the NUG, the National Unity Consultative Council, ethnic resistance organizations, and emerging federal‑unit bodies are moving toward a more unified federal structure, including discussions around a Federal Steering Council to coordinate civilian and armed actors.
The Burma Act and BRAVE Burma Act were drafted with exactly this trajectory in mind. They authorize support that can help resistance actors consolidate gains, provide basic services in liberated areas, and build the institutions needed for a future federal democracy—while making it harder for the junta to access weapons, fuel, and finance.
A victory by this coalition would have several concrete effects that directly align with US interests. A representative, post-junta government would be under intense domestic pressure to review and renegotiate opaque deals on ports, dams, corridors, and mines, opening space for more balanced partnerships with the US and its allies, including on critical minerals under robust environmental and human‑rights standards.
It would be far better positioned to cooperate on dismantling scam compounds, cyber‑fraud hubs, and trafficking networks that now operate with impunity and directly target Western citizens and companies.
For US allies—Thailand, India, Japan and Bangladesh—a stable, sovereign Myanmar would transform a source of insecurity into a partner that shares the burden of regional stability. Thailand’s troubled western border could become a corridor for legal trade and energy, not refugees and cross‑border crime.
India would see the prospect of a Myanmar that is not a Chinese corridor to the Bay of Bengal. Japan’s Indo-Pacific vision and its investments in regional infrastructure would be more secure if Myanmar’s coastline and resource base were not effectively embedded in Chinese logistics and protected by Russian arms and Iranian fuel.
A lean, disciplined strategy
An America First strategy does not require large troop deployments or open‑ended state‑building. It requires using the tools Congress has already provided. The priorities flow directly from the Burma Act and BRAVE Burma Act:
- Cut the lifelines that sustain the junta’s war machine—especially Iranian fuel deliveries, Russian weapons transfers, and key Chinese financial and logistical channels—through coordinated sanctions, maritime monitoring, and enforcement, as envisaged in the Acts’ provisions on sanctions and transnational repression.
- Sharpen targeted sanctions on individuals and entities directly complicit in atrocities and sanctions evasion, while protecting humanitarian channels and closing loopholes via third countries, again using the Burma Act’s reporting and listing authorities.
- Support resistance consolidation through political engagement, technical assistance, and humanitarian aid to NUG‑linked and ethnic administrations, as both Acts explicitly encourage, so that when the military weakens, there is a credible governing alternative—not a vacuum Beijing can fill.
- Coordinate with allies—especially Thailand, India, Japan, Bangladesh, and willing ASEAN members—to align efforts within a common Indo‑Pacific framework, leveraging the Acts’ emphasis on multilateral diplomacy and accountability for atrocities.
This is restraint with strategic purpose. It minimizes direct US exposure while using existing law to shape an outcome that enhances American security, constrains rival powers and reduces the risks and costs imposed on allies.
Unlocking Project Vault
Project Vault is meant to protect US industry from overreliance on Chinese‑controlled minerals by building a strategic reserve and knitting together trusted suppliers. It should not become a back door to legitimizing one of Beijing’s most important regional clients.
Responsible‑sourcing principles, human‑rights concerns and conflict‑sensitivity are not luxuries in Myanmar; they are the dividing line between reinforcing a failing military order and helping lay the foundation for a sovereign, pluralistic state.
Normalizing the junta in the name of “minerals engagement” would do three things at once: entrench a conflict‑minerals economy, validate China’s stalemate strategy and alienate the only actors inside Myanmar capable of building a more balanced, less dependent future.
An America First Myanmar policy looks very different. It backs a unified resistance win with smart, limited tools; it uses the Burma Act and BRAVE Burma Act to tighten pressure on the junta and empower democratic forces. It accepts some short‑term supply‑chain risk for longer‑term geopolitical gain. And it insists that strategic minerals should not be bought at the price of permanent instability.
That is the realist policy choice—and the one Washington should make.
James Shwe is a semi-retired professional engineer and independent advocate for Myanmar democracy. He writes on infrastructure, sovereignty and regional geopolitics.