Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 24 – Moscow has
complained about and done everything to stop efforts to create transportation
links between China and Europe that bypass Russia, but Moscow experts say the
biggest reason China is focusing on these alternatives is because Russia lacks the
transportation infrastructure such a project requires.
Still worse, some of these
specialists say, Russia’s infrastructure is in such bad shape and is likely to
remain that way in the future, that absent a radical shift in policy, the
country’s regions will not be able to take advantage even of “Silk Road”
projects that bypass Russia by creating branch lines linking in to them.
In an article in today’s “Nezavisimaya
gazeta,” journalist Andrey Serenko says bluntly that “in the subjects of the
[Russian] Federation, there is no infrastructure for participating in Beijing’s
logistical initiative,” the result of a lack of “political will on the part of
the federal leadership” (ng.ru/regions/2016-11-24/3_6867_kartblansh.html).
This bottleneck, Serenko continues,
is highlighted by the efforts of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the former president of
Kalmykia, to revisit a proposal he made seven years ago to develop an
800-kilometer canal that would like the North Caucasus with the Chinese project
and lead to development there.
In 2009, his idea was shot down not
only by the onset of the economic crisis which left little money for such
gigantist efforts but also by lobbyists in Moscow who preferred to build
another canal that would serve only domestic Russian markets but that promised
more money for those involved. It hasn’t been built either, the “Nezavisimaya
gazeta” journalist notes.
Because Russia wasn’t prepared then
and doesn’t appear prepared now to develop its infrastructure in ways that
would make it the obvious route for a Chinese-organized Silk Road project,
Beijing since 2013 had been focusing on the creation of a “single belt and
single path” through Central Asia and the South Caucasus bypassing Russia
entirely.
Had Moscow listened to Ilyumzhinkov seven
years ago, Russia might be in a very different position; but it didn’t and it
isn’t, Serenko says. Now, perhaps, the center will revisit the question but it
may be a case of too little too late as Beijing is working hard to promote the
bypass route.
“Several days ago,” he writes, “representatives
of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Afghanistan prepared for
signing an agreement on the creation of the Lazurian corridor,” a new railroad
and canal transit network “connecting Central and South Asia with the Caspian,
Black Sea and Mediterranean basins.”
“Beyond doubt,” Serenko continues, “this
route will interest the Chinese authorities” as well.
What does all this mean for Russia
and for Russia’s region? “The more transit corridors from the western borders
of China to the borders of the European Union bypassing Russian territory
appear, the fewer will be the chances of Russia’s regions to extract economic value
from their favorable geographic position.”
Moreover, he points out, Moscow will
lose the possibility of “dividends” in foreign affairs that the Kremlin may
have hoped for. Perhaps people in Moscow are now rethinking their past approach,
but “the sluggishness of Moscow in this competition will involve the loss of
economic prospects not only for Russia’s southern regions but for the country
as a whole.”
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