{"id":38877,"date":"2018-04-27T11:00:16","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T01:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=38877"},"modified":"2018-04-27T09:39:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T23:39:03","slug":"grand-strategy-along-polar-silk-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/grand-strategy-along-polar-silk-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand strategy: all along the polar silk road"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Under Xi Jinping<\/a>, China has a grand strategy<\/a> to reshape the current geopolitical landscape. Xi has set out an integrated and coherent set of ideas about China\u2019s ultimate objectives in the international system, and how it should go about achieving them over the coming decades.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the Belt and Road Initiative<\/a> (BRI). The Chinese government<\/a> \u2018has mobilized the country\u2019s political, diplomatic, intellectual, economic and financial resources\u2019 to meet \u2018the most pressing internal and external economic and strategic challenges faced by China\u2019.<\/p>\n

The effective power of China\u2019s political\u2013economic model to implement a grand strategy is evident in the Arctic. The release of China\u2019s Arctic Policy white paper<\/a> in January coincides with what the US National Snow and Ice Data Center describes as \u2018the second lowest Arctic maximum [extent of Arctic sea ice]<\/a> in the 39-year satellite record\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Chinese white paper outlines a proposal \u2018to jointly build a \u201cPolar Silk Road\u201d\u2019 with existing BRI partners in order to \u2018facilitate connectivity and sustainable economic and social development of the Arctic\u2019.<\/p>\n

In China, there\u2019s no partisan debate<\/a> over the scientific consensus on global warming like that found among political elites in the US. Climate change is simply accepted as an objective fact that needs to be accommodated.<\/p>\n

The white paper opens by saying, \u2018Global warming in recent years has accelerated the melting of ice and snow in the Arctic region.\u2019 The \u2018development of shipping routes in the Arctic\u2019 as the ice retreats is therefore a goal because those routes will \u2018become important transport routes for international trade\u2019.<\/p>\n

The sea ice is disappearing at a greater rate than expected<\/a>. Arctic-capable shipbuilding technology is advancing in parallel. A South Korean-built Arc7 LNG carrier transited the Northern Sea Route in December 2017. The passage marked a major milestone<\/a>\u2014the first time a shipping vessel has made independent passage without the support of an ice-breaker during that time of year.<\/p>\n

The Arc7 LNG carrier is one of 15 of the new class<\/a> being built for the Yamal LNG project on the Kara Sea. This isn\u2019t just \u2018one of the largest and most complex LNG projects in the world\u2019. The project is half-owned by Russia, 20% owned by the China National Petroleum Corporation and, significantly, 10% funded<\/a> by China\u2019s \u2018Silk Road Fund<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s partnering with Russia<\/a> aligns China\u2019s \u2018geopolitical and economic interests\u2019, providing it with a strategic stake<\/a> in the Arctic, as well as access to LNG and potentially to other resources.<\/p>\n

Geographically Russia already has a huge advantage in the Arctic. If the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf decides in Russia\u2019s favour on the Lomonosov Ridge claim<\/a>, it will increase Russia\u2019s exclusive economic zone by 1.2\u00a0million square kilometres. The Arctic is believed to hold up to one\u2011third of the world\u2019s untapped oil and gas reserves, as well as extensive but as yet unquantified mineral riches<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Northeast Passage<\/a> overlaps the Northern Sea Routh through Russian waters, which is most of its length. It\u2019s the shortest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Traversing along the northern coast of Siberia, it cuts travel time from China to Europe by at least 12 days compared to the Suez route.<\/p>\n

While the commercial advantages are obvious, the strategic importance<\/a> of that route lies in the fact that \u2018both China and Japan import 80% of their oil through the Strait of Malacca\u2019. The so-called \u2018Malacca dilemma<\/a>\u2019 of a potential US naval blockade of the straits in a conflict makes establishing the Arctic alternative all the more attractive.<\/p>\n

Russia recognises the northern route\u2019s importance and launched the world\u2019s biggest ice-breaker<\/a> in 2016, one of four being constructed. China already has one Arctic-capable ice-breaker<\/a> and is building another to enter service in 2019.<\/p>\n

In contrast, the Americans\u2019<\/a> ability to operate year round<\/a> in the Arctic is limited because the US has only one heavy and one medium ice-breaker that are operational. Both are beyond their life-of-type.<\/p>\n

At best the US might get a new Arctic-capable ice-breaker around 2025<\/a>. Professional assessments<\/a> suggest that the US needs six, but significant investment in ice-capable shipbuilding capacity would be required.<\/p>\n

Even before the Arctic white paper, China\u2019s ambitions were evident<\/a>. Although not an Arctic nation, China has used diplomacy, trade, investment and research in pursuit of its Arctic objectives while trying to avoid a resource rush from which it might be excluded.<\/p>\n

Therefore, an important objective of the new policy is to \u2018participate in the governance of the Arctic<\/a>\u2019. China has pursued this by making a substantial contribution to the work of the Arctic Council, and by strengthening its relations with European Arctic nations. It has also established coordination mechanisms with Japan and South Korea, non-Arctic nations that share China\u2019s commercial and strategic interests in the Arctic.<\/p>\n

The combination of long-term strategic objectives, a settled view of the objective facts, one-party rule, and substantial government direction of its economic activity account for China\u2019s effectiveness in positioning itself to be a geopolitical force in the Arctic in the long term.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the recent US National Defence Strategy<\/a> summary didn\u2019t refer at all to the Arctic, and the National Security Strategy<\/a> mentioned it just once in passing. Neither raised global warming as an issue. Moreover, the myopic obsession with \u2018America first\u2019<\/a> seems to preclude the early emergence of a new grand strategy in the US.<\/p>\n

The Arctic demonstrates in a microcosm the potency of China\u2019s capacity to implement its grand strategy generally. Whatever criticisms and grievances the US has with China\u2019s contemporary trade, investment and intellectual property policies, or how distastefully Western commentators regard one-party rule, the true challenge for the US is to marshal its political and economic strengths behind a comparable long-term strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under Xi Jinping, China has a grand strategy to reshape the current geopolitical landscape. Xi has set out an integrated and coherent set of ideas about China\u2019s ultimate objectives in the international system, and how …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":38878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,163],"class_list":["post-38877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-russia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGrand strategy: all along the polar silk road | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/grand-strategy-along-polar-silk-road\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grand strategy: all along the polar silk road | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Under Xi Jinping, China has a grand strategy to reshape the current geopolitical landscape. 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