How a World Land Bridge can knit a partnership among India, China, Russia, and US in the Trump era

The upcoming Trump presidency has raised hopes for the construction of a World Land Bridge

Caption: An undersea tunnel under the Bering Strait would be key to establish a World Land Bridge

For those sections of humanity yearning for the rise of a multipolar world, the arrival of US President-elect Donald Trump on the global stage has caused a huge flutter.

It is not because Trump is an advocate of multipolarity, based on the collective and collaborative rise of civilizational states. In fact, his worldview is quite nationalistic, fixated only on the revival of American “greatness.” However, his international outlook is based on extreme pragmatism. So, if America’s elevation can be achieved by engaging with so-called “authoritarian” regimes, in North Korea or China, that would be fine, just as it would be okay to work with Europeans so long as they shed their perceived parasitic instincts and establish a truly fair and symbiotic relationship with Washington.

However, it is important to understand what Trump is not. The 44^th President** of the United States is not a globalist. That means he rejects the anti-tradition crusade of an unelected uber powerful US-led transnational elite that insists on foisting liberal democracy on the entire planet, even if means engineering regime change in countries that resist this diktat. In other words, Trump shares his anti-globalist agenda with the underlying idea of multipolarity, which rejects globalism and wants to raise a multipolar world as an alliance of sovereign civilizational states.

In the words of Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, Trump is unlikely to embrace multipolarity; he is a proponent of American hegemony. “However, he views this hegemony radically differently from the globalists who have dominated U.S. power over recent decades (regardless of whether they were Democrats or Republicans).

Globalists equate military-political dominance and economic superiority with a liberal ideology cantered on imposing anti-traditional values globally (including within the U.S.). For them, hegemony is not the dominance of a country but of an international liberal ideological system.

Trump, on the other hand, believes national interests should come first, rooted in traditional American values. In other words, this is right-conservative hegemony, ideologically opposed to the left-liberal approach (Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Biden).

It remains unclear how Trumpism will manifest in international relations. It could objectively accelerate the transition to multipolarity, or it could slow it down.”

Despite the uncertainty, Trump’s arrival has opened the door for some fresh air to come in. Advocates of multipolarity cannot waste this moment of possible transition to define a new global system.

In order to make a headway, fresh ideas are needed, especially on trans-continental connectivity that can naturally transcend rigid geopolitical fixations and spawn a new paradigm of unprecedented collaboration.

The project of trans-continental connectivity has already begun. Despite the criticism, some of it legitimate, the Chinese have already launched their Belt and Road Initiative—a giant connectivity undertaking that links Asia with Europe along the vast Eurasian landmass, with nodes extending to the Global South. Russia has its own blueprint of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) that also envisages deep connectivity. Similarly, Russia, India and Iran have pioneered the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC).

In tune with these headways, how can the Americans partner these giant connectivity initiatives, creating a vast space of wealth creation and economic boom?

The establishment of a World Land Bridge may provide an answer.

The Schiller Institute, based in the United States and Germany has for long proposed that the US should partner Russia in physically integrating the Americas with Siberia, leading to a logistical, economic, and cultural enmeshment with Eurasia, that is already being connected under China’s BRI and Russia’s EEU.

The Institute, in one of its presentations has pointed out that there is a plan to bridge the gap between Alaska and Siberia, by constructing a tunnel beneath the Bering Strait. This is the single most decisive connectivity project, leading to the emergence of a World Land-Bridge, as it will connect Russia and the United States—in other words all of Eurasia, to the entirety of the Americas.

There is a second project, also of enormous significance for providing land connectivity to the Americas to the entire globe. This is a proposal to connect, further south, Central and South America by linking the Darien Gap via roads and high-speed trains. Once the Darien Gap is bridged, a rail connection can be provided that will connect South America with Eurasia, generating millions of jobs, opening new markets, sprouting new cities, industrial parks, and tourism hubs. The cultural osmosis of such enterprises, through people-to-people contacts, on an industrial scale, is unfathomable.

Fortunately, both Moscow and Beijing have been active advocates of the “game changing” Bering Sea tunnel, aware of its potential to help elevate the global economy to an altogether new level, ending geopolitical rivalries and benefiting humanity through a giant project, driven by science and state-of-the-art engineering.

The Siberian Times had earlier reported that Vladimir Yakunin, former president of Russian Railways had unveiled a plan of developing a massive trans-Siberian highway that would link his country's eastern border with the U.S. state of Alaska, crossing a narrow stretch of the Bering Sea.

The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development (TEPR) project would involve the construction of a major roadway alongside the existing Trans-Siberian Railway, along with a new train network and oil and gas pipelines.

"This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project," the Siberian Times had quoted Mr. Yakunin as saying. "The project should be turned into a world 'future zone,' and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies." Yakunin had said that the road would connect Russia’s far eastern Chukotka region with Alaska’s Seward Peninsula through the Bering Strait. The road would likely enter Alaska some distance north of the town of Nome.

The Chinese have also proposed a “China-Russia-Canada-America” link, which will connect with Alaska through the Bering Strait tunnel. The state-run Beijing Times newspaper had reported that an undersea tunnel of 200 kilometers would be required to cross the Bering Strait. The line would run for 13,000km, about 3,000km longer than the Trans-Siberian Railway. The entire trip would take two days, with the train clocking an average speed of 350km/h.

India’s participation in the trilateral connectivity project with Myanmar and Thailand under the “Act East” framework offers another node of engagement with the trans-continental growth corridors. For instance, Thailand is central to a railway project to link Singapore with China’s Yunnan province. Starting from Singapore, the proposed railway will pass through Malaysia, Thailand, Laos before entering Yunnan.

Once a land corridor with Thailand is established, the southeast Asian nation can become the gateway for India’s access to a highly developed rail network that already links China with Europe.