RESOURCE POWER AND RESOURCE SECURITY: THE POLITICS OF NONFUEL MINERALS TRADE (URANIUM, CANADA, SOUTH AFRICA, AUSTRALIA)

The developed producers, Canada, Australia and South Africa, and not the developing producers, are the power wielders and major traders in nonfuel minerals. Specific circumstances allow producers to obtain compliant behavior from consumers. These include: exporter's market share, importer's degree of dependence, the material's being critical to importer's economy, and the trading system's condoning non-market goals. These (and other) criteria comprise an analytical device, the strategic trading relationship, which is used to demonstrate developed producer commodity power and developed consumer vulnerability.;Consuming country governments rely on the private sector to deal with national enmeshment in strategic trading relationships. Japan excepted, OECD members fail either to address their continued access to nonfuel minerals, or their ability to survive supply disruption with minimum dislocation.;Producer power is exemplified by Canada's threat and use of embargo to make her uranium customers tighten their nonproliferation policies. To resource power as instrument (actualizing the power latent in a strategic trading relationship) must be added the idea of resource power as structural power: importer's bucking the preferences of exporter would cost him dear should exporter make use of strategic trading links. Structural power deters. South Africa's ability to head off wholehearted economic pressure is the classic case.;Exporter's ability to construct and use strategic trading relationships depends both on autonomy (measured by reliance on external capital, and trading partner diversification), and resilience (impact of minerals on balance of payments, and each mineral's contribution to export earnings). The developed producers score highest on these measures.