I must embarrassingly say that you're wholly correct, the United States was rather late to arrive at this party.
China's already built roads to the area, and US soldiers are protecting the Chinese construction effort
Sorry for the snarky tone but seriously, it's this kind of ridiculous macho attitude that got the US into so much trouble in the first place.
The United States has no need to seize any assets. We simply stop defending the roads, at which point the insurgents will begin seizing any convoy that attempts to get through.
My statement was not one of opinion. It was one of fact. If the Chinese do not behave as the United States wants on those stretches of highway, the highways will cease to be accessible to the Chinese.
China never "behaves" as the US wants. Where have you been for the past 50 years?
Furthermore, the direct beneficiary of Chinese mineral wealth is you, the US Citizen. Who do you think produces a majority of the goods you consume as well as finances the majority of your government's debt?
US and Chinese interests are inexorably linked - which is probably why the US Army is protecting Chinese infrastructure.
Step into the 21st century and let go of your borderline racist delusions like "If the Chinese do not behave..." - or what? The US will launch another proxy war and lose just like in Vietnam and Korea? The powers that be in both hemispheres have realized that there are better strategies to wealth, and they have been implementing them efficiently.
from the second page -
In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.