Sudan in Washington’s Calculations: When Natural Wealth Becomes an Instrument of Pressure and a Promise of Partnership

Hisham Yousif Abdul Rahman
Sudan’s war economy is no longer merely a means of financing the fighting; it has become a key to understanding the conflict and the positions regional and international powers have adopted. The resources being used today to fuel the war, from gold to trade and financing networks, could themselves become the foundation for rebuilding the Sudanese economy tomorrow, or provide an entry point for a new contest for influence within the country. Between these two possibilities lies a question more important than the scale of the wealth itself: who has the authority to dispose of it, who receives its proceeds, and who determines the terms on which it is invested?
In a series of previous analytical articles published on the Al-Muhaqqiq News website about the war in Sudan and its regional repercussions, we examined how developments on the ground often precede international decisions, how networks of interests, financing and supplies have become part of the mechanisms sustaining the conflict, and how Sudan’s internal crisis intersects with the calculations of regional and international powers. Our subsequent article, Sudan Between Beijing and Washington: As Others Reshape the Region, Sudan Remains Mired in War, posed a question that went beyond developments on the battlefield: where does Sudan stand amid the strategic transformations taking place around it, and how can it recover its capacity to take the initiative rather than remain an object of other countries’ calculations?
Developments in the United States Congress now add a new dimension to this question. Between bills aimed at restricting the sources of war financing and another proposal that opens the door to a future partnership based on technology, agriculture and minerals, a deeper issue emerges than the mere differences between legislative instruments: does the current American interest in Sudan’s wealth represent a new shift in US policy, or is it an extension of an older strategic vision that recognised the importance of Sudan’s resources, geographical position and future economic potential at an early stage?
Answering this question requires revisiting the history of Sudanese-American relations and examining official documents that reveal that Sudan was never absent from Washington’s strategic calculations. Interest in its economic potential preceded the discovery of oil, China’s entry into the energy sector and the current war by several decades.
In March 1957, Richard Nixon visited Sudan as Vice President under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His visit formed part of an African tour that included several countries newly independent from colonial rule. The Richard Nixon Presidential Library retains files on that visit, including briefing materials, maps, and reports, as well as a report on his African tour prepared for the American President. The visit matters because of its timing: it occurred about a year after Sudan gained independence, when Washington sought to understand Africa’s political and economic transformations and identify where its interests lay on the continent during the Cold War.
This interest was not merely a passing diplomatic exercise. An American document from 1957 outlining US policy objectives toward Sudan included, among broader American goals in the region, securing access for the United States and its allies to resources, strategic locations, and transit rights, while preventing the Soviet bloc from gaining access. In its specific discussion of Sudan, the document called for an assessment of the country’s agricultural and natural resources, encouragement of American companies and industrial interests to participate in its development, and continued assessment of its military and geographical potential in anticipation of future strategic requirements.
In its historical context, this language reveals that Sudan was viewed through two closely related lenses: its geopolitical position at the intersection of Arab, African, and international interests, and the economic and strategic opportunities offered by its natural resources.
Lieutenant-General Ibrahim Abboud’s visit to the United States in October 1961, during which he met President John F. Kennedy, further underscored Sudan’s importance in American relations with newly independent African states. In his welcoming remarks to Abboud, Kennedy highlighted Sudan’s geographic position, its relations with neighbouring countries, and its regional importance, at a time when Washington was paying increasing attention to Africa and its place in international competition.
Yet Richard Nixon’s own economic thinking merits closer examination. In a study of natural resources he prepared as Vice President, Nixon discussed the need to conserve and develop resources systematically, strengthen scientific and technological research to prevent future shortages, and preserve strategic stocks of minerals and essential materials required for American national security. He also addressed the importance of untapped resources in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the need to bring them within the scope of development and the global economy.
This does not mean that Nixon issued a specific directive, according to the available document, to keep Sudan’s resources undeveloped. It does, however, show that the American economic vision clearly considered resources in terms of future scarcity, economic security, and strategic reserves. Natural resources were assessed not only by their immediate commercial value, but also by their potential significance in the international balance of power.
This approach gained further prominence in the 1970s, when energy, raw materials, and economic security became more central to American strategy, particularly after the 1973 global oil crisis. In April 1974, the US National Security Council issued Study Memorandum No. 200 (NSSM 200) at President Nixon’s direction. The study examined how global population growth affected American national security and interests through the end of the twentieth century.
It explored the relationship between population growth, food, energy, minerals and natural resources, noting the United States’ growing dependence on mineral imports from developing countries. More significantly, it argued that the mineral resources problem was not simply a question of whether natural reserves were sufficient. It also involved the political and economic issues surrounding access to those resources, the terms governing their exploration and exploitation, and the distribution of revenues among producing countries, consuming countries and the governments that owned the resources.
One defining characteristic of American strategic thinking at the time therefore becomes clear: control over resources no longer necessarily meant ownership of the territory where they were found. Rather, it meant securing access to them, influencing the terms of their exploitation, and ensuring their supply whenever required.
The document most directly connected to Sudan, and most explicit in expressing the country’s future economic value, was an official telegram sent by the American Embassy in Khartoum to the US Department of State on 21 September 1976. Numbered 2751, it was entitled Sudan After the Coup Attempt: Implications for the United States.
In this telegram, the American diplomatic team offered a striking assessment. It argued that Sudan’s economic and geopolitical importance was likely to increase substantially between 1980 and 1990, and that American interests in the country would be primarily economic. The assessment went beyond Sudan’s geographical position to examine its vast agricultural and food-producing potential, the possibility that it could become a major food supplier, and its potential resources of iron, copper, gold, uranium and oil. The telegram did not merely list these possibilities; it recommended that Washington take advantage of the favourable political circumstances prevailing at the time to establish economic relationships and positions in Sudan that would yield benefits over the following years and decades. In this context, it drew on American relations with Saudi Arabia and the strategic gains achieved through an early, sustained American presence there.
This document reveals that American institutions viewed Sudan as a country whose future economic significance might exceed its current political and economic weight. It also confirms that interest in Sudan’s agricultural, mineral and petroleum resources was not a product of current developments, but part of official strategic assessments dating back approximately half a century.
From this perspective, accounts of Nixon’s interest in global resource maps, and of Sudan being viewed as an important strategic reserve for the future, can be understood within an intellectual and political climate in which Washington was reassessing the world’s sources of energy, food and minerals. However, the available documents establish early American interest in these resources and in securing future access to them; they are not, on their own, sufficient to prove that a specific decision was taken to prevent their exploitation or leave them unextracted until global resources had been depleted.
This distinction matters. The political significance of these documents does not depend on proving a comprehensive secret plan. The fact that a major power’s institutions identify another country’s resources as an important part of their future interests, and then advocate establishing an early economic and strategic foothold there, is sufficient to show that the country has become part of their long-term calculations.
American interest in Sudanese resources did not remain confined to diplomatic reports. In the 1970s, the American company Chevron entered Sudan’s oil sector and conducted exploration that revealed important fields in Sudan’s oil basins, including Bentiu, Heglig, and Adar Yale. These discoveries could have marked the beginning of a major economic transformation early on, had the Second Sudanese Civil War and the deterioration of security and political conditions not impeded the sector’s development.
However, Sudan’s oil industry developed alongside profound domestic political changes that drew the country back into civil war. In May 1983, an armed rebellion broke out in the south, leading to the emergence of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Sudan People’s Liberation Army under John Garang. This occurred amid escalating disagreements over autonomy arrangements under the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement and Nimeiri’s decisions to redraw the southern region’s boundaries. The announcement of Islamic Sharia laws in September 1983 then added a particularly sensitive religious and political dimension to the conflict, deepening southerners’ and non-Muslims’ concerns about the nature of the state and citizenship rights, while complicating prospects for a national settlement.
These developments were not unrelated to Washington’s calculations. The United States faced a contradiction between its strategic alliance with Nimeiri’s government, which it saw as a partner in countering Soviet and Libyan influence in the region, and the political and human rights consequences of the government’s domestic policies and the renewed war in the south. Notably, President Ronald Reagan received Nimeiri in Washington in November 1983, after the September laws were announced, and reaffirmed the importance of relations between the two countries. This indicates that American strategic interests remained firmly in place and that implementing Sharia law did not, in itself, immediately break relations with Khartoum.
The war, however, soon spread from the political and military spheres into the heart of the oil project itself. In February 1984, one of Chevron’s camps in the Upper Nile region was attacked by forces belonging to Anya Nya II. Three foreign workers were killed and others were injured, prompting the company to suspend operations in the area. As the war continued and security deteriorated, attempts to resume oil activities on a stable basis were frustrated, ultimately leading Chevron to withdraw from Sudan altogether in 1992.
This withdrawal cannot be attributed to a single cause. The war and insecurity directly obstructed the company’s operations, while political changes, the deterioration of relations between Khartoum and Washington, and subsequent American pressure further complicated continued investment. A 2020 International Monetary Fund report noted the impact of political instability and American pressure on Chevron’s withdrawal. Academic studies have also confirmed that oil companies’ decisions in Sudan were significantly shaped by government policies and international relations, rather than purely commercial considerations.
The Chevron experience thus reveals a complex interplay among Sudan’s governance, the resumption of civil war, regional and international competition, and energy companies’ interests. It deserves to be examined in light of the broader question raised by the history of American interest in Sudan’s resources: to what extent does economic viability determine the fate of strategic investments, and to what extent can politics redirect them, even when the resources themselves possess considerable future value?
The historical irony is that Chevron’s departure from Sudan’s oil sector did not leave the country’s oil untapped indefinitely. Instead, a few years later, it opened the way for Asian companies, foremost among them Chinese firms, to enter the sector. American companies had been among the first to explore this economic opportunity, which became one of the most prominent areas of economic cooperation between Sudan and China.
Conversely, Chevron’s withdrawal enabled China to enter Sudan’s oil sector in the mid-1990s, when Sudan’s need for financing and technology converged with Beijing’s desire to secure energy supplies. The partnership resulted in the establishment of an integrated oil industry and the commencement of oil exports in 1999. We have examined this experience in previous articles, but its significance here lies in what it reveals about the way changes in international politics can redistribute investment opportunities and economic influence, and how Sudan, when guided by a clear vision of its interests, can benefit from having multiple partners without becoming dependent on any one of them.
Returning to the present, the proposed bills before the US Congress take on broader significance against this historical background. The issue is not a sudden American interest in Sudan’s resources, but rather their renewed prominence in American legislative debate, this time in the context of the current war, competition over supply chains, technology and strategically important minerals.
This does not mean Washington has settled on its course of action, or that Congress has divided into two opposing camps, one favouring sanctions and the other investment. Not all the proposed bills have become law, and insufficient evidence establishes a legislative division along these lines. Nevertheless, taken together, their provisions reveal two distinct approaches in terms of instruments and timing. Depending on how they are implemented, these approaches could complement one another or produce conflicting outcomes.
On 6 March 2025, the Sudanese Peace and Security Partnership Act (H.R. 1939) was introduced in the US House of Representatives, sponsored by Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks. It included measures targeting individuals and entities involved in war crimes and serious violations, obstructing humanitarian assistance and violating the arms embargo imposed on Darfur. The proposed sanctions include asset freezes, visa restrictions, and certain financial restrictions, along with measures related to civilian protection and diplomatic and humanitarian action.
This was followed by the Preventing External Aggression and Escalation in Sudan Act (S. 4726), which Republican Senator Jim Risch introduced on 9 June 2026. It placed greater emphasis on the economic and commercial networks linked to the war and on external actors contributing to its continuation. Among its principal proposed provisions is an update to the US warning on the risks of doing business in Sudan, with particular attention to gold, gum arabic, supply chains and smuggling, as well as the risks associated with dealing with entities linked to the Sudanese Armed Forces, the Rapid Support Forces and other armed groups.
The significance of this approach lies in its shift of focus from the combatant and his weapon to the economic system that enables the fighting to continue. Gold leaving production areas through complex networks, trade operating outside official channels, money crossing borders, and logistical services connecting suppliers with buyers can all become components of a parallel economy. Such an economy draws strength from state weakness and reproduces the conditions that allow the war to continue.
This reinforces one of the central points raised in our earlier analyses: when a war develops an economy capable of financing its continuation, it no longer depends solely on political or military decisions. A battle may end while the financing networks remain active; alliances may change while the economic interests established during the conflict endure. For this reason, dismantling the war economy is not merely a financial measure accompanying a political settlement; it is one of the conditions necessary for that settlement to endure.
The most intriguing development, however, came on 13 October 2026, when Republican Congressman Jim Baird introduced the Sudan Minerals Investment, Partnership, Agriculture and Trade Act (the IMPACT Act), H.R. 10795.
Unlike proposals focused on sanctions and accountability, this bill proposes a framework for a future economic partnership between the United States and Sudan. It would be based on providing American agricultural and mining equipment and technologies in exchange for access to a broad range of Sudanese resources, including gold, uranium, crude oil, chromium, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, silver, nickel and gum arabic.
This is a striking list. It extends beyond traditional resources to include minerals used in strategic industries, advanced technology, energy and infrastructure, alongside gum arabic, which is particularly important to the food and pharmaceutical industries. This diversity shows the breadth of potential economic interests the bill addresses. However, it does not necessarily confirm that commercially viable reserves of all these resources have been confirmed or that any agreement to exploit them is in place.
The proposed technologies include modern agricultural machinery, precision irrigation systems, agricultural processing equipment, geological surveying technologies, safe mining methods, environmental processing techniques, and supply-chain expertise. However, the bill does not immediately open the door to this partnership. It requires the US Secretary of State to determine that a legitimate, civilian-led governing authority has been established in Sudan and has made tangible progress in protecting civilians, achieving political stability and managing resources responsibly.
This is therefore neither an existing investment agreement nor an American commitment to inject billions of dollars into Sudan. Rather, it is a conditional legislative framework outlining what economic relations between the two countries might look like at a later stage.
Here, a historical irony emerges that merits reflection. The resources discussed in American assessments since the 1970s, particularly gold, uranium, oil, iron, copper and agricultural potential, have once again come to the forefront of American legislative thinking, but under entirely different political and economic circumstances.
If earlier documents viewed Sudan as a potential future source of food, energy and minerals, today’s proposals approach the same resources from two interrelated perspectives: their current capacity to finance the war and their future potential to underpin an economic partnership after it ends.
This similarity is not enough to prove a single, continuous American plan that has remained unchanged from Nixon’s era to the present. Administrations, international circumstances and economic priorities have all changed. It does, however, support a more measured and important conclusion: the strategic value of Sudan’s resources has remained a feature of American thinking, to varying degrees and in different forms, while the instruments Washington has sought to use in dealing with that value have changed.
Gold, whose exploitation routes finance the conflict the proposed legislation seeks to restrict, is also among the resources that could underpin an investment partnership after the war. Gum arabic, which provides a livelihood for large numbers of producers and traders, appears in discussions of supply-chain risks before reappearing among the resources covered by the proposed economic cooperation.
The paradox, then, lies not in any change in the value of these resources, but in the question being asked about them: how can we prevent them from being used to finance war today, and ensure that their proceeds contribute to building the state tomorrow?
This question extends beyond American legislation to the very nature of Sudan’s economy. Resources do not automatically translate into development simply because they exist. Nor do gold, minerals, agricultural land, and water confer bargaining power on a state unless it can regulate their exploitation, protect its revenues, and direct them toward production, infrastructure, and public services.
Sudan’s experience shows that abundant resources can coexist with weak institutions, and that substantial revenues cannot prevent economic and political imbalances without sound management and accountability.
From this perspective, the IMPACT Act is intriguing not because it promises Sudan new wealth, but because it revives an old question under different circumstances: what can Sudan offer the world, and what should it receive in return? Would the partnership amount merely to exchanging raw materials for equipment and technology, or could it provide an entry point for building Sudanese capabilities in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, services and infrastructure?
There is a substantial difference between Sudan acquiring equipment to extract minerals and building a national mining industry encompassing geological surveying, processing, manufacturing, training and scientific research. Equally important is the difference between importing modern agricultural machinery and developing an integrated system that links production with irrigation, energy, food processing, storage, transport and markets.
In the first case, the capacity to extract resources or produce primary commodities increases. In the second, the economy’s ability to generate added value, employment and knowledge expands.
In this context, not everything mentioned in proposed legislation about Sudanese minerals should be treated as evidence of proven reserves available for commercial exploitation. Geological indications that a mineral exists are not the same as proof of economically viable reserves that can be extracted at a reasonable cost. Developing such resources also requires technical and environmental studies, investment, infrastructure, and stable security and legal conditions.
Accurate knowledge of Sudan’s resources—their quantities, quality, and commercial viability—should therefore be part of an independent national undertaking, rather than relying solely on information from potential investors’ assessments.
At the same time, economic sanctions, whatever their motivations, require a careful distinction between networks financing the war and legitimate economic activity. Targeting smuggling and transactions linked to violations differs from disrupting the trade on which farmers, pastoralists, and small-scale producers depend for their livelihoods.
Unless pressure measures are designed to target those benefiting from the war while protecting the civilian economy, they may end up weakening the very society they are intended to help protect, while illicit networks adapt to the new restrictions.
This dilemma is more complicated because establishing a legitimate civilian authority—the fundamental condition for the proposed American partnership—does not automatically mean the state will regain control of its resources and institutions. Abdalla Hamdok’s first government following the December Revolution offers a lesson that should not be ignored. It failed to manage the country’s resources with the required efficiency and decisiveness, and did not deliver the economic and institutional transformation Sudanese people had expected. Meanwhile, centres of military and economic power remained beyond effective civilian control. This failure, together with conflicts among political forces and the limited capacity of the government’s executive personnel, weakened the transitional period and helped create the conditions for a coup against the revolutionary process and the frustration of its hopes. Legitimacy, however important, cannot replace competence, governing capacity, and the ability to assert state authority.
The transition from a war economy to a peace economy therefore cannot be achieved merely by signing a political agreement. It requires rebuilding state institutions, consolidating financial authority, and placing resources under legal scrutiny and accountability mechanisms.
This is where American developments connect with the issues we explored in our article Sudan Between Beijing and Washington. The matter is no longer confined to the Chinese President’s visit to Cairo, the development of American relations with Ethiopia or the establishment of a new framework for strategic coordination between Sudan and Saudi Arabia. These developments show that Sudan’s environment is changing and that countries are reassessing their economic and security interests.
The new American legislation adds a dimension more directly connected to Sudan’s domestic situation: American legislative thinking about the war and its aftermath now includes the resources that form the basis of the country’s potential economic power, after decades of being featured in American diplomatic and strategic assessments.
It’s not surprising that the United States, China, and other countries seek to secure their economic and strategic interests in Sudan’s resources; this is inherent in international relations. The real challenge for Sudan is not the number of parties seeking access to its wealth, but its ability to define its own interests, negotiate from a position of sovereignty and diversify its partnerships without becoming dependent on any one party.
In previous articles, we have examined opportunities for Sudanese-Egyptian-Saudi integration and economic relations with China and the United States. What matters here is that renewed American interest in Sudan’s resources must be met with a clear national vision governing the terms of their investment and the use of their revenues. Work on this vision must begin before the war ends, so Sudan does not face economic arrangements designed by others to serve their own interests while its national priorities are absent.
The three American bills are not sufficient grounds for concluding that Washington has decided Sudan’s economic future or has already shifted from sanctions to investment. They do, however, reveal an American approach that considers Sudan from two interconnected perspectives: restricting the ability of resources and commercial networks to sustain the war, and establishing a conditional framework for economic cooperation with a future civilian authority.
When the American documents dating from the 1950s and 1970s are added to this picture, the broader historical context becomes clearer. The same Sudan that Washington identified early on as a strategically located country and a potential source of food, energy, and minerals is now the subject of American legislation addressing both the networks exploiting its resources during the war and the possibilities for cooperation over those resources in a future period of peace.
Yet the distance between these two visions also exposes a painful Sudanese paradox: for decades, others have recognised the potential future importance of Sudan’s resources, while Sudan itself has failed to transform them into a diversified national economy and a stable state capable of protecting its wealth and managing its revenues.
This does not mean that foreign policy alone explains the failure of Sudanese development, or that internal conflicts were merely the consequences of outside intervention. National responsibility for weak institutions, poor management, and political conflict is no less important than regional and international interests. Nevertheless, ignoring the external dimension of the resource economy, or separating major economic decisions from international competition, does not fully explain Sudan’s experience.
The lesson to be drawn from Nixon’s visit to Sudan, the meeting between Abboud and Kennedy, the American assessments of the 1970s, the Chevron experience, the subsequent oil partnership with China, and the current congressional proposals is therefore not that Sudan is condemned to be governed by others’ plans. Rather, Sudan’s resources and geographical position will continue to attract the attention of major powers, whether or not Sudanese people develop a national vision for managing them.
The real struggle is not merely over who controls gold, oil and minerals today, but over who has the right to determine their future tomorrow, and how they can be transformed from resources contested by competing centres of power into public wealth managed by a state accountable to its people.
Ending the war and rebuilding the state are therefore not simply political prerequisites for attracting foreign investment. They are the foundations of economic sovereignty itself. A state that cannot protect its resources or regulate their exploitation cannot negotiate fair terms, no matter how many offers and partnerships come its way.
When Sudan regains its state institutions and its capacity to take the initiative, the question will not be whether Washington will offer technology in exchange for minerals, whether Beijing will continue investing, or which power will wield the greatest influence over its economy. The more important question is: what national project does Sudan want to build, and what can each partner contribute?
The objective must not be for Sudan to move from a war economy in which armed groups compete for its resources to a peace economy in which foreign powers compete for the same wealth. It must be for the Sudanese people to reclaim their state and decide how their wealth is invested, how its proceeds are distributed, and how their future is shaped.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=19249