Kirill Dmitriev of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) has suggested a tunnel to connect Russia and Alaska. This idea is highly meritorious, but due to present US provocations and sanctions, it is fraught with difficulty.

Recent Proposals for Joint Economic Cooperation

The proposed tunnel would link Russia’s Chukotka region and Alaska and could potentially be built in less than eight years.

Sanctions Make Cooperation Difficult or Impossible

The technology, resources, funds, capital, and skilled personnel are certainly available and would not be issues. Almost all of the issues would be political and diplomatic. At the present time, the United States has extensive, almost comprehensive, sanctions, against Russia. Sanctions that were ill-advised when they were enacted and remain ill-advised, serving no crucial American interests and not even being effective in the pursuit of the policies they were enacted to advance.  It isn’t obvious to me that sanctions have been effective against Russia, although I have always stated and maintained, and I still maintain, that the sanctions were wrong, not in the interests of the United States (weaponizing the dollar has hurt our credibility), and that weakening Russia was also not in the interests of the United States. I have been hearing endless talking heads across the West, droning on, reading from the same script, “Russia is collapsing, Russia is crumbling, the Russian economy is in free-fall.” I don’t see evidence of that (and I hope not, as I do not want a crumbling Russia; I see no benefit to the USA by causing Russia to collapse or crumble; I see only disaster for civilization). At the same time I have heard Russian voices insist, “Sanctions have had zero effect on Russia,” which again, I don’t know. I don’t believe Russia is collapsing, but I find it difficult to believe that widespread sanctions would not have impacted at least some industries to some degree. Even with Russians being industrious and creative, the sanctions would still create hurdles that Russians would have to adapt to, work around, and overcome, using the sort of ingenuity that Russians have been renowned for. It is my perspective that the sanctions likely have impacted Russians in some regards, but Russian society is not collapsing simply because McDonald’s left the Russian market.

In any event, regardless of what sanctions have or have not caused in Russia, sanctions have certainly hurt Western Europe. Indeed, Germany’s economy has suffered since 2014 and the initial sanctions and has been in freefall since 2022 and the more comprehensive sanctions.

If the EU insists on staying mired in a pit for the sake of their self-righteous,........

© New Eastern Outlook