DKI APCSS Professor Shyam Tekwani  draws a compelling parallel between Europe’s nineteenth-century potato dependency and the Indo-Pacific’s growing reliance on critical minerals in his latest Security Nexus Perspective, “The Potato Logic of Power.” Through the lens of history, Tekwani examines how efficiency-driven supply chain decisions have created structural vulnerabilities in lithium, cobalt, and rare earth element processing, with China controlling the overwhelming majority of refining capacity. Using case studies from Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Indo-Pacific region, the paper reveals how extraction without processing capacity rarely confers strategic leverage, and how dependencies formed through efficiency are rarely recognized until disruption forces awareness. This thought-provoking analysis offers policymakers a timely reminder that what enables transformation today may constrain it tomorrow.

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