Moscow Sees Northern Sea Route Vitiating Great Silk Road

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Moscow Sees Northern Sea Route Vitiating Great Silk Road
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 11 Issue: 8
January 15, 2014 03:44 PM Age: 8 hrs
By: Paul Goble

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, many in Europe and the United States talked about building an updated version of the Great Silk Road to link China with Europe via the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus and to help redirect the focus of these regions away from Moscow and toward the West. A great deal has been done to realize that project involving highways, railways, and pipelines (see “Central Asia, Afghanistan and the New Silk Road: Political, Economic and Security Challenges,” The Jamestown Foundation, November 14, 2011). But even as those have gone forward, another link between Europe and Asia has opened up: the Northern Sea Route. And Russian experts now believe that it, rather than any Great Silk Road development, not only will play the predominant role in East-West trade but also give the Russian Federation enormous influence over that exchange.

Russia has a long history of navigating the Arctic Sea north of its landmass, but until relatively recently, it used that route almost exclusively to supply population points along the coast and to take out natural resources for use elsewhere. In recent decades that has changed as a result of global warming, which has led to the retreat of the Arctic ice cover and of the revolution in shipping, as well as due to the use of the inter-modal container, which has made sending goods by sea far cheaper than any other means (http://www.arctic.gov/publications/related/AMSA/scenarios.pdf). Those two trends were especially evident during the 1990s when, as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and its northern fleet were in disarray. This situation opened the way for more international involvement in the Arctic and allowed many to assume that the Great Silk Road would long remain the most efficient path between China and Europe.

But today, Aleksandr Pronin says in an analysis on the Stoletie.ru portal, Russia is moving to recover its position in the Arctic and especially along the Northern Sea Route. Part of the reason for this has to do with Russia’s interest in developing the natural resources of the Arctic itself, including gas and oil, but part of it has to do with Moscow’s interest in countering the geopolitical consequences of an unchallenged Great Silk Road project (stoletie.ru/rossiya_i_mir/morskoj_fasad_rossii_729.htm).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pronin argues, the Northern Sea Route became much more important to Russia because “the majority of the major sea ports in the European part of the former Soviet Union were now the property of Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic countries.” Moreover, rail traffic from Russia to Europe had to pass through newly independent states. Only by sea could Russia have unimpeded commerce with western countries.