Cold Calculation: Is Arctic Really the Future?
21:13 02.04.2025 (Updated: 01:31 03.04.2025)
© Sputnik / Maksim Blinov
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It’s hard to believe that lands and waters so challenging and unhospitable are really becoming one huge vortex of international activities.
But, there you are: while the President of the US is talking (or, maybe, joking) about acquiring Greenland and Canada, the President of Russia addresses a plenary session of the 6th International Arctic Forum, called The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue.
Finally, the Russian media is suddenly becoming filled with a multitude of details about the future international activities in that very extreme North, for decades to come.
And, yes, India does figure in all possible calculations about the new shape of global logistics, or at least we in Russia see India’s future role in that equation.
These calculations are cold in all possible senses of the world. Why would anyone care about building ports and other transport hubs in an area, where the ice in the ocean is sometimes four meters thick, and the water temperature in some places never goes above plus one degree, Celcius, even in summer?
One may imagine that the really clever people are absolutely sure that the climate is changing, and these white wastelands will get green soon. But the Russian thinking in most cases presumes that, if the Arctic ice really melts, all the better. While if it does not, the future world economy will still need these territories above the Arctic Circle, in fact, it needs them now. So one will be wise to invest really serious money there.
You may suspect that we are talking merely about the route, vital only for the Russian economy. To confirm that suspicion, we have to remind that, quoting Vladimir Putin, while in 2014, a mere four million tons of cargo were transported via this corridor, by last year that figure had risen to nearly 38 million tons, and that volume may reach 70–100 million tons by 2030. But that, by far, is not only Russian cargoes we are talking about.
Why the sudden rush for all kinds of northern routes now, and what’s wrong with the existing ones? Here we have to display a lot of optimism about the future of European economy, currently stagnating, and presume that cargoes will still be moving along the Eurasian continent land mass for decades to come.
We also have to accept the fact that, if Indian economy goes on at the current pace, it will outpace all of Europe’s GNP by 2040 ($39 trillion against $37 trillion). Needless to say, China’s economy is unlikely to become smaller in the same period.
All that explosive Eurasian growth will need resources and goods delivery routes, seriously expanded from the ones in existence today. And one may as well be pessimistic about some of these routes. The Suez is been overshadowed by tension, to put it mildly, right now. The Malacca Straits may get under a cloud, if the Sino-American battle for domination will not be contained to civilized forms. While the route from Russia’s North-West to Russia’s Far East seems to be safe from regional tensions, for lack of regions and states there, save for only one.
And, anyway, even now cargo delivery up there is faster and cheaper than the one that outskirts Eurasia from the south. Namely, if you transport a container from Europe to a port in the Far East, you have a difference between 23.2 (the Suez route) and 14.28 thousand kilometers (in the Russian North). Which means time, 37 days against 18. While time means money.
To repeat, that’s the Arctic advantages even now. While the flurry of events in Moscow, these days, are basically about investing into making these Russian advantages even bigger. We are talking about other conferences, following the mentioned Arctic Forum, also the meetings conducted by Russia’s Ministry of Transport, and several publications with plenty of data that followed.
And – to note – we are talking about international attendance, with experts from India, Emirates, China, Singapore, the US and Great Britain. They are not necessarily onlookers, some of these people talk and behave like partners making their own long-term plans of participation.
Participation in exactly what? First come the simple things, meaning something already underway, with money invested or allocated. Like, in a matter of several years Russia will launch five new ice-breakers, including the real big one, called “Russia”, 71 tons and capable of breaking the above-mentioned ice four meters thick. We expect it to sail in 2027. That monster makes a path among ice 50 meters wide, which is enough to accommodate Suezmax tankers.
New shipbuilding facilities are to be built in Murmansk and Vladivostok, and this is where participation of Indian and Chinese stockholders has been repeatedly mentioned. Finally, the money has already been allocated to conduct a new charting of sea depths along all the Northern sea route, and four floating nuclear power stations are to be launched soon.
That, to repeat, is something that’s already in the pipeline. While the significance of these several international meetings in Moscow was in charting the course for developing the Russian North in the following decades.
And here we quote again Vladimir Putin: Yet our plans, he says, in terms of cargo volumes, geographical reach, and expansion of the Arctic fleet – are far more ambitious. The Northern Sea Route is poised to become a pivotal segment of the Transarctic Transport Corridor, stretching from St Petersburg through Murmansk to Vladivostok. This corridor is designed to connect global industrial, agricultural, and energy hubs with consumer markets via a shorter, safer, and more economically viable route. This is widely acknowledged – experts across the East and West recognize its significance.
Cargo shipments along the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor, went on the President, are set to increase on the back of growing minerals production and the advanced processing of these resources right here in the Arctic, and due to rising international transits.
I would like to stress the importance of linking this Trans-Arctic corridor with our domestic railway network everywhere from the northwest to Russia’s Far East, reaching all the way to the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Here you have to imagine a map, where most of logistics, so far, runs horizontally, from East to West. While Putin is talking about adding vertical (north-south) lines to that design, one of these lines being the corridor from the Indian Ocean to Arctic.
These things are underway and at least one factor adds to their success. That factor is the people. About 2.5 million Russians already live and work in Arctic areas, while Canada or Greenland has about 60 thousand inhabitants each in their comparable territories.
And, finally, to our calculations about the future global economy. It’s always difficult to say what comes first, the hen or the egg. I’d think that it’s the success of big Asian nations that makes planners project bigger things to the distant future.
But you may also say that the rise of Eurasia has been seriously augmented by long-term vision of the things to do, to support that growth.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
