Trump Administration Considers Rare Earth Deal That Could Reshape the Burma Conflict

In the early days of the coup, Burmese people naively asked for US intervention of the coup, in similar ways we saw the US intervene in the Philippines, Taiwan, and Korea in the decades past that led to a democracy. The cynical and popular answer was that Burma held no oil, i.e. no strategic value for the US. Rare earths may soon change that.

While all the production from Burma goes to China for processing due to proximity to China, there is a way for the exports to be coursed to Thailand, via the same routes opium and other narcotics have been shipped out of Burma in the decades since CIA encouraged opium farming in Eastern Burma to finance the Chinese Republican army fighting the Red Army.