By Matthew Ehret The battle lines for the future of humanity were made explicitly clear during this week’s Eastern Economic Forum held in Vladivostok under the theme of “Opportunities for the Far East in a World Under Transformation”. President Putin set the tone of the event by noting: “The strategic vector for the development of the Far East is towards a new economy,…
Category: Arctic
The Russia-China Polar Silk Road Speeds Ahead
By Matthew Ehret Since China’s Arctic extension of the New Silk Road was first unveiled in a January 2018 white paper, a process of Arctic development has been unleashed which represents one of the most important and under-appreciated developments on Earth. Not only will 10 days be saved by goods moving between China and Europe via…
Open System Pathways for a Multi-Polar Future
By Matthew Ehret During the course of President Putin’s June 24 opening speech during the Moscow Parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of WWII, the following call to action was made: “We understand how important it is to strengthen friendship and trust between nations, and are open to dialogue and cooperation on the most pressing issues on the international…
Tomorrow’s Arctic: Theatre of War or Cooperation? The Real Story Behind the Alaska Purchase
By Matthew Ehret Today, the Arctic has increasingly become identified as a domain of great prosperity and cooperation amongst world civilizations on the one side and a domain of confrontation and war on the other. In 2007, the Russian government first voiced its support for the construction of the Bering Strait rail tunnel connecting the Americas with…
The Russian-China Polar Silk Road Emerges
Whether the Arctic will become a platform for cooperation or warfare has been a question often posed throughout the past 150 years. As early as 1875, a vision for Eurasian-American cooperation was becoming realized as leading Americans and Russians alike foresaw the construction of telegraph and even rail lines across the 100 km Bering Strait…
Will Arctic Science Cities Transition Humanity into a Space-Faring Species?
The creation of the Polar Silk Road as an Arctic extension of China’s Belt and Road Initiative means that this neglected, and last unexplored domain of the Earth’s surface is opening up to a serious policy of development for the first time in many decades. The opening up of the Arctic as the new frontier…
India and Other Asian Nations Join the Polar Silk Road
By Matthew Ehret The best partnerships occur when all participants have special talents to bring to the relationship which makes a whole more powerful than the sum of its parts. This is the beauty of the multi-polar alliance formed by Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and a growing array of Asian, African and South American statesmen…