by John Lawrence
Business Before Politics. Global Warming Good for Russia.
Russia is looking forward to exploiting the Arctic region for all the natural resources located there, and global warming is making it possible. From Russia's and the Donald's view, global warming is not an unmitigated evil. There will be winners and losers, and Russia stands to be a big winner. As the sea ice melts, routes to the Pacific cut the normal transit time in half. Warmer conditions make the exploitation of large oil, natural gas and mineral deposits that much easier. Russia's exposure to the Arctic runs all along their entire northern border.
Most of Russia is much closer to the North Pole than to the equator. From west to east the country spans 4200 miles from Kalingrad to Nome, Alaska. The country's 17.09 million square kilometers include one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Extending for 35,910 miles, the Russian border is the world's longest.
There will be winners and losers, and Russia stands to be a big winner.
No wonder Putin looked on with approbation as Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement on global warming. Russia stands the most to benefit. Although we don't know for sure what business Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had in Russia, it's practically a certainty that there's money in it for the Trump family business empire. That is undoubtedly what the Trump-Putin connection is all about. Nothing sinister here in terms of selling state secrets to the Russians or anything like that, but just a mutual interest in exploiting Russia's Arctic resources.
If the world says nay to fossil fuels, Russia is left with a whole lot of them in the ground - unexploited. That's a lot of money sitting there not enriching Russia or Trump family interests not to mention the Koch brothers. After Mar-a-Lago is submerged under ten feet of water, perhaps, Trump will open a new hotel cum golf course on the Arctic coast. It could happen. It's not as far-fetched as it may seem. Antarctica's huge glaciers are calving at warp speed. In short order the world's sea levels could rise by 10 feet or more.
Maybe finally the US and Russia have some reason to cooperate, that being that both countries have natural resources in the Arctic region. The US has Alaska, Seward's folly, (remember?), which is a treasure house, albeit not as large a one as Russia's. The following is a short summary of Russia's largesse which global warming will only make more accessible. The resources are potentially worth $35 trillion, according to CBS News. This is from arctic.ru:
The Arctic contains a wealth of petroleum and mineral resources. Currently, the region produces about one tenth of the world's oil and a quarter of its natural gas. The Russian Arctic is the source for about 80 percent of this oil and virtually all of the natural gas; Arctic Canada, Alaska, and Norway are the other leading producers. Recent appraisals suggest that a considerable fraction of the world's undiscovered petroleum reserves lie within the Arctic. ...
Nonetheless, more than 400 onshore oil and gas fields have been discovered north of the Arctic Circle. About 60 of these are very extensive, but roughly one quarter of them are not yet in production. More than two-thirds of the producing fields are located in Russia, primarily in western Siberia.
The major oil and gas area in Russia, and one of the largest oil regions in the world is Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region (KMAR). Here about 57 percent of Russian oil is extracted. In KMAR there are over 500 known oil and gas fields, the combined reserve of which is about 20 billion tons.
In Kara Sea there are 2 gas condensate offshore fields, Leningradskoye and Rusanovskoye. There are 180 fields in Timan-Pechora province, including the so-called fountain ones, which can yield up to 1,000 tons per day. ...
The most developed sector of the region, the Russian Arctic also holds abundant deposits of nickel, copper, coal, gold, uranium, tungsten, and diamonds. As well, the North American Arctic contains pockets of uranium, copper, nickel, iron, natural gas, and oil. However, many known mineral reserves have not been exploited because of their inaccessibility and the steep development costs.
Mining is especially well developed in northern Russia. Siberia is rich in ores of almost all economically valuable metals, such as nickel, gold, molybdenum, silver, and zinc. There are also some of biggest known deposits of coal, gypsum and diamonds. The Sakha Republic (Yakutia) yields approximately 25 percent of the world's rough diamond supply. Copper, iron, tin, platinum, palladium, apatite, cobalt, titanium, rare metals, ceramic raw materials, mica, and precious stones are also found in northern Russia. Most of these mineral assets occur on the Kola Peninsula-where glaciers scraped away the top layer of soil many thousands of years ago, thus making the deposits a lot more accessible. Fossil ivory, from mammoth tusks heaved up by melting permafrost, also is becoming increasingly available in Siberia.
Global Warming Produces Winners and Losers. Russia is the Clear Winner.
Global warming will make the Arctic region more hospitable for human workers so that towns and cities will be able to be developed more expeditiously. Sea routes will expedite shipping to China and other parts of Asia. China's Belt and Road infrastructure program will dovetail very nicely with Russia's Arctic development plans. As Russia develops its infrastructure in the Arctic region, China is set to invest a trillion dollars in infrastructure development in Russia and other parts of Europe, Africa and Asia.
Russia is also developing military bases in the Arctic region to protect its investments there and assert its rights so other countries don't get the idea that they can push Russia around in what it considers its own back yard. Russia is obsessed with the Northern Sea Route (NSR) since it will result in closer economic, and, therefore, political ties with the Orient.
“The warming creates great opportunities and now we are talking a lot in our country about developing this passage between Europe and Asia,” says Vladimir Kotlyakov, scientific director of the Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences. “If you have atomic-powered vessels, the possibility to navigate the Arctic becomes, generally speaking, quite a routine business,. That provides extra opportunities for development of the Russian Arctic.”
But development of the NSR is not the only transportation infrastructure development the Russians are doing in the Arctic. This is from Tass, the Russian news agency:
MOSCOW, May 25. /TASS/. The first trains may run on the Belkomur railway (White Sea-Komi-Urals) already in 2023.
The Belkomur project is a new railway route, which will connect industrially developed regions in Siberia and the Urals with ports in Russia’s North and North-West. The project will add to effective development of the Arctic projects and will form the international railway route across Russia between Russia’s European North and China, thus cutting by 800 km the transportation distance for deliveries from Siberia and the Urals.
Trump Was Involved With a Shadowy Firm Called Bayrock
Trump partnered with all kinds of people as long as there was money in it for him. Getting to put his name on real estate developments for no charge was something he couldn't resist. He has already considered doing deals in Russia as Bloomberg reports:
[A] troubling history of Trump's dealings with Russians exists outside of Russia: in a dormant real-estate development firm, the Bayrock Group, which once operated just two floors beneath the president's own office in Trump Tower.
"It's ridiculous that I wouldn't be investing in Russia," Trump said in that deposition. "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment."
Bayrock partnered with the future president and his two eldest children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, on a series of real-estate deals between 2002 and about 2011, the most prominent being the troubled Trump Soho hotel and condominium in Manhattan.
During the years that Bayrock and Trump did deals together, the company was also a bridge between murky European funding and a number of projects in the U.S. to which the president once lent his name in exchange for handsome fees. Icelandic banks that dealt with Bayrock, for example, were easy marks for money launderers and foreign influence, according to interviews with government investigators, legislators, and others in Reykjavik, Brussels, Paris and London. Trump testified under oath in a 2007 deposition that Bayrock brought Russian investors to his Trump Tower office to discuss deals in Moscow, and said he was pondering investing there.
"It's ridiculous that I wouldn't be investing in Russia," Trump said in that deposition. "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment."
Anything hot whether a babe or a real estate deal was sure to attract Trump. Trump is looking for his surrogate son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to explore deals with Russia. He met with the Russian banker, Sergey N. Gorkov. It's not clear what they wanted from each other, but the banker is not known for his diplomatic proficiency. However, the banker is a close associate of Mr. Putin. The Trump team is probably looking for a business relationship and, who knows, a thaw in relations between the US and Russia might just follow after that. First things first. Business before politics.
Who knows, maybe Trump/Kushner is looking forward to economic opportunities in Russia when Trump is no longer President. That could happen fairly soon if Trump is impeached. In any event 2020 is not that far away. So there might be nothing nefarious about Trump's evident admiration for Putin and his fascination with Russia. It may be simply that business interests lead him there. He may be in it for the "emoluments," that is the considerations and perquisites of power. His Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is a former CEO of Enron, and he seems to have a nose for fossil fuels that has warmed the cockles of his heart as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned. Putin's cockles have also been warmed by all reports. Why else would he give Tillerson a medal? Tillerson knows that American expertise could be very helpful to Russia in exploiting Arctic resources, and he might be instrumental in making it available - for a price, of course. There will be no giveaways here. Diplomacy will be conducted if it is in both country's, or should I say, both men's mutual interests.
