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, pretentious posturing by maintaining their sanctions on Russia, that is their business. It doesn’t have to involve the United States, and it shouldn’t involve the United States. The USA doesn’t need to replicate the mistakes of the EU and follow the loser’s path that the EU has embarked upon. We all know that the EU is experiencing massive economic contraction and that the EU lifting sanctions and normalizing with Russia would benefit both the EU and Russia.
However, if the EU doesn’t want to pursue détente and cooperation with Russia, the USA is still free to do so. But this means that American sanctions must be ended. It is not possible to cooperate with Russia on a project as ambitious as a transcontinental tunnel, linking Eurasia to North America, while the USA maintains comprehensive sanctions on Russia.
How to Remove Sanctions
Since the EU isn’t actually relevant, and they really aren’t — they are noise-making technocrats who are too timid to do anything other than “monitor” situations and take things “under advisement”— the US has complete freedom of action in undertaking détente with Russia. Brussels doesn’t even need to be consulted, let alone give their assent. Only relevant players are consulted or have their insight solicited or their consent requested. On the global stage Russia is a relevant player, and the USA is a relevant player, although in the strictest sense there are no players, because this is not a game; there are actors undertaking action. Europeans have long ceased being acters, they are talkers, not doers. European technocrats seem to believe that thought and talk actually change reality, but Russians know better, and Americans essentially do as well.
The US can unilaterally remove all sanctions on Russia, and we can do this without European involvement. We don’t even owe Europeans an explanation unless we want to be courteous and polite.
If the US is going to unilaterally remove sanctions on Russia (and Belarus, for that matter), it should simply do so and move forward from there. Sanctions come and sanctions go, just like presidential administrations. It is time for this administration to make the sanctions of prior administrations go, as they should have gone with the passing of those administrations. President Trump should not feel the need to remain locked into a foreign policy inherited from President Obama or “President” Biden (whoever was deciding policy for Biden while Biden was propped up in a chair and given ice-cream cones for behaving himself and signing documents placed in front of him).
We don’t need to putz around or dance around the issue of sanctions removal, we can just call up the Russians and work something out, “we’re going to remove sanctions, they were wrong and misguided and pursued from an adversarial position of hostility assuming a reality of a zero-sum game that we no longer assume or want to pursue, let’s have a reboot of relations and close the chapter on the past, we don’t expect you to forget, we know Russians have long memories, but it is time to forgive, and we can all move on into the future.”
If Cooperation is Not Possible on Small Things, How Can We Cooperate on More Serious Matters?
If we are not able to remove sanctions and coordinate to build a tunnel that will provide mutual economic benefit, then how can there be cooperation on matters of greater substance and significance? I speak of strategic arms limitations treaties, intelligence sharing, space exploration, mutual projects to place a permanently manned research station in a lunar orbit, along with a permanently manned support station on the lunar surface, as well as long-term projects to tow asteroids into a lunar orbit and begin to mine them (these are all attainable, but not if the Great Powers of this Earth get bogged down in comparatively trivial disputes on this world).
I previously worked in the nuclear industry, and I know a few things about uranium enrichment, tritium replenishment, and the like. I happen to know the US does not have sufficient uranium reserves or capacity for simultaneously replacing its existing nuclear arsenal, expanding its existing nuclear arsenal, maintaining fuel for commercial reactors, and serving as fuel in the reactors that produce the plutonium-238 necessary for the radioisotope thermoelectric generators that would be necessary for space exploration and research stations. Something would have to give in that list. The only way to free up these resources for significant space exploration and to maintain existing strategic stockpiles is to reach an accommodation and understanding with Russia (and perhaps China for that matter) so that we do not have to participate in a new nuclear arms race with expanding stockpiles. Perhaps it is naïve or optimistic, but I am cautiously optimistic that the possibility for serious American-Russian cooperation exists in regard to space exploration.
If we choose to use uranium to fuel reactors that irradiate neptunium-237 in order to produce plutonium-238 for radioisotope thermoelectric generators, that is entirely feasible with existing technology. However, if we simultaneously choose to enter a new nuclear arms race, expanding warhead inventories and associated production pipelines, then real trade-offs arise. The United States nuclear enterprise has finite industrial, financial, and institutional capacity. Not every objective can be pursued at once without sacrifice. In this sense, the choice becomes a modern version of “butter versus guns,” or more precisely, “generators versus warheads.”
If the US is willing to forget about space exploration and is willing to accept a significant risk of national bankruptcy, we can probably initiate and possibly win a renewed nuclear arms race, but why? For what reason? What does it serve? Do we need to undertake such a policy? If we can’t even get sanctions removed and a tunnel built, how do we cooperate on strategic arms limitations and space exploration?
Sanctions Have to End: Narratives Must Change
As I understand it, Russia is signaling off-ramps by floating the idea of economic collaboration in Siberia via a tunnel linking the Chukotka region and Alaska. This is entirely feasible with present technology and the capabilities of both nations. But it requires de-escalation of tensions, moves towards détente, an end to escalatory rhetoric and posturing (which is mostly a matter of problematic American provocations that need to cease on the American side), and the end of sanctions. We can’t launch a joint tunnel project with a foreign partner if we have comprehensively sanctioned them.
This will, of course, require charting a new course in terms of national narrative as expressed through the media. Long-term cooperation isn’t possible if whacked out lunatics across the USA, whipped into a frenzy of hate by an increasingly irrelevant legacy corporate media that despises the United States, are going to undertake violence against President Trump, his cabinet, and any Russian workers, technicians, engineers, or officials who are in the USA to oversee and participate in their portion of the joint tunnel project. In the present climate of hate created by irresponsible corporate media in the USA (I hesitate to call them “American media” because they aren’t truly American, they are anti-American globalists who despise this nation and the population), there are probably serious safety concerns for Russians who would be in the USA for such a project, concerns that wouldn’t exist for Americans who happened to be in Chukotka or Kamchatka or Vladivostok, because in that sense it is an unfortunate reality that the USA is not as orderly a society as Russia is.
A tunnel for economic cooperation is possible, but first the right words must be found to shape a narrative that helps to begin to build the bridge to bridge the gap that exists between Russian and American civilizations.
Bryan Anthony Reo is a licensed attorney based in Ohio and an analyst of military history, geopolitics, and international relations
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