War in Ukraine is creating new Silk Road corridor

Ignoring the Middle Corridor is a failure U.S. should mitigate

By Ariel Cohen, Fletcher School alumnus, Senior Fellow at Atlantic Council

Amid the pomp and pageantry of Moscow‘s May 9 Victory Day parade commemorating the Soviets’ triumph in World War II, the attendance of some post-Soviet Central Asian Republics presidents was not only about the past joint sacrifices. Nor was it about Vladimir Putin’s desperate need to break out of the unprecedented isolation into which he plunged Russia. It was also about geoeconomics.

In the year after Russia’s 2022 reinvasion of Ukraine, freight volume more than doubled on the Middle Corridor, a transportation network connecting Asia with Europe via rail, boat and highway. In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken unveiled a new U.S. approach to Central Asia that stressed the facilitation of the Middle Corridor, which bypasses Russia. This route removes Russia’s ability to extort its neighbors by leveraging its transit infrastructure while expanding an independent economic artery to the states of Central Asia and further to China. 

In April, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, the two indispensable state actors for the Middle Corridor, proposed the expansion of the strategic route. An expansive overland trade network linking Central and East Asia and Europe has haunted the imaginations of merchants and rulers since the Mongol Empire fully realized its potential in the 13th century. Today, however, the 2013 China’s Belt and Road initiative, which connects East and West, is jeopardized by the Russian aggression in Ukraine.  

The strategic rationale of the Middle Corridor is that Russia ends up a net loser. The multimodal route would link West to East via Turkey (or Black Sea route), Georgia ports, Azerbaijan, and across the Caspian Sea to Central Asia and beyond. 

One wouldn’t know this profound geoeconomic transformation was unfolding just by looking at the Moscow parade. Central Asian leaders begrudgingly sharing the stage with Mr. Putin are simultaneously working with Beijing and Brussels on isolating Moscow by building the Middle Corridor. 

Regrettably, Western investment and international support for economically bypassing Russia did not materialize. During Russia’s shaky experiment with democracy in the 1990s, or even before Mr. Putin’s 2008 aggression against Georgia, this was an understandable choice. The Middle Corridor requires political will, local support and significant multilateral investment to upgrade and expand infrastructure and build connections across the Caspian Sea and new port facilities. The World Bank, International Financial Corp., Development Finance Corp., European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and others need to get fully engaged.  

After 2008, and especially after 2022, the political calculus changed. Ignoring the Middle Corridor is a failure we should mitigate.

We know what happens when Russia can exercise economic leverage over its neighbors and why the Middle Corridor is so important. Even before the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the war in the Donbas, Ukraine too was a victim of Russia’s energy dominance from 2007 through 2014. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Uzbekistan and most post-Soviet states have been directly coerced by Russia. Romania, Balkan and Baltic states also suffered from gas supply disruptions. 

Russia’s transit dominance is used to choke neighbors’ economies after they demand better economic arrangements or exercise sovereignty. Russia uses its export facilities to coerce neighbors and allies. Lacking Western support, neighbors then fold or appease the Kremlin.

The most brazen example of this can be seen in Kazakhstan, with a landmass the size of Western Europe and the 12th-largest oil supply, which refused to recognize Russia’s annexations of Ukraine’s territory and offered to send more oil to the European Union.

Russia cited “unseasonable weather” and temporarily severed Kazakhstan’s energy links with the outside world. This was followed up by a former Russian president wondering if Kazakhstan was a real state, proclaiming it could solve the problems of Kazakh nationalism inside Kazakhstan, and finally threatening the sovereignty of Kazakhstan four separate times on May 8 by a notorious war criminal warlord Igor Girkin, aka Igor Strelkov, claiming that after Ukraine “there will be a battle for Kazakhstan.” Russia’s overcommitment to its futile war in Ukraine meant no lessons learned. 

Yet Russia would have to confront the neighborhood’s heavyweight. China, the Belt and Road godfather, is interested in the project. Despite the February 2022 “friendship without limits” and a subsequent meeting between “close friends” Xi Jinping and Mr. Putin this past March, China has been reluctant to help Russia directly. Fear of secondary sanctions combined with annoyance at Russian incompetence and Moscow’s economic support of India has resulted in China voting against Russia at the U.N., canceling some energy cooperation with Russia, and refusing to send Russia desperately needed military equipment — hardly a “no limits” friendship.

China is warming up to the Middle Corridor for three reasons. First, it wants to increase its influence in Central Asia at Mr. Putin’s expense. Second, it wants more trade with Europe that is not dependent on Russian goodwill or liable to Western secondary sanctions. Third, it hopes to increase European dependency on China and splinter the Western alliance.

The first two are self-evidently good for the West, since disempowering Russia as competition between Western adversaries is welcome. The risk that this corridor could splinter the Western alliance is not significant given European opposition to French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent panda embrace. 

The Middle Corridor should effectively prevent conceding strategic economic engagement in Eurasia to Russia and China alone. The U.S. companies need to be more involved in Central Asia, Caucasus, and specifically the Middle Corridor. For that, broad U.S. and EU strategic support is necessary.  

There has never been a better time or a more urgent reason for the West to push the Middle Corridor, which makes a strategic difference for Ukraine. The Middle Corridor will isolate Russia, help Ukraine, spur economic development in a part of the world dominated by Russia and China, and supply the EU and the world with the necessary raw materials, including hydrocarbon energy, uranium, rare earths, wheat and fertilizer. But most of all, it may drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing.

(This post is republished from The Washington Times.)