Definition of natural resources as a strategic reserve is, in my opinion, a great idea, and I've posted here about it before. Of course my career is in exploration, so I have my own selfish interest in the topic, but that's not the whole of my reasoning. An unknown deposit is worth nothing. A known deposit is worth something. The government long ago started to catalogue the resources of the United States by creating the United States Geological Survey. They survey has fought for it's budget every step of the way. It lives on because some of our politicians recognize that knowing where strategic resources are is an important aspect of national and economic security.

Tom is right, exploring for resources is a big investment, and there are few companies (or countries for that matter) that would be willing to sink the money needed to discover then not exploit a resource. However, modern resource extraction finacing is not as simple as that. Hedging against future production is done all the time and for huge sums of money. It's risky, but it is done in terms of gold, silver, copper, and oil. That may be one of the reasons that most OPEC countries doubled their reserve estimates in the late 1980's. That way, they could bank with the reserves they said they had. We don't really have a good way of checking up on this.

I have been conducting a thought experiment of late. What if I examine oil not only as a commodity, but as money? Better yet, a currency? For the Petro-dollar is a real thing, at least in finacial terms. Do the actions of governments make more sense if I view it this way? What would happen if oil was not traded in dollars, but in Euros? Saddam was going to do that and Iran is gearing up to give it a try. Russia wants to stop using the dollar for its oil sales. Rumour has it (I've only seen one source on this and I don't have a handy link) that OPEC has been getting a percentage of their oil sales in gold in addition to dollars. The one big difference is that oil is burned. Gold is removed from the ground and returns to the ground in a vault. Some silver is used up but also finds its way into hoards. Oil is hoarded, eventually, in the atmosphere, where it doesn't really have a good return on investment.

We in the discovery biz know that once a resource is discovered, it will get exploited - eventually. It just takes the right price. Sometimes known resources are removed from the market by environmental pressures. Developement of The Windy Craggy Copper Deposit in British Columbia (500 million tons of super high grade poly-metallic ore) was halted due to enviromental pressures. But someday, at the rate we are going, it will be mined. Someday. I've toured a high grade chrome deposit in Montana that sits in the ground because South Africa can produce it cheaper. For now. Here in Colorado there is a large Moly deposit that remains in the ground because of past moly prices. The enviromentalists like to believe they put an end to it but already the owners of the deposit are looking at starting production on their investment that has sat in nature's vault for tens of million of years. The Witts Basin in South Africa has more gold than the rest of the world combined, but ownership conflicts and deeper reserves means that the gold production of South Africa has dropped again last quarter, to the lowest level since the 1930's. But the gold is still there.

As to your second thought, that important resources must be protected, by force if necessary, is understood by the strategist. I amuses me, in a grim way, that governments don't admit that as being part of their actions.