While true, it looks like bauxite is mostly mined from Australia, with a long tail of other countries, many of which are within the US sphere of influence or far from China.

The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close to China).

Vietnam has faught war with china more reciently than the us. They are also afraid that chian will attack again, while they are reasonable confident the us won't.

Yes, but they do violate the part about being close to China (and hence easier to conquer in a hypothetical war).

If the only supplies of bauxite were across an ocean or a whole continent it would be much easier to deny them supplies of bauxite in a conflict.

Even if they could conquer the territory with it, they'd need to transport it back or move manufacturing to it.

Economic interdependency helps keep the relative cold war peace amongst frenemies, while tariffs and trade wars are likely to increase the risks of proxy wars and direct military conflict.

I think this hypothetical is more about once a conflict is imminent.

Also, general consensus seems to be that economic codependence has failed, with Russia invading Ukraine, humans rights abuses and authoritarianism in China, and China poised to attack Taiwan.

The world was also very interconnected prior to WW1.

And already 3x more vehicles.