The 'Great Game': Russia's geostrategic breakthrough

FPI / June 18, 2023

Analysis by Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs

Russia appears to have finally won secure access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, the goal it has pursued vigorously since the 17th Century: the old Great Game may be over, and the new begun.

Russia’s inchoate, nascent, but strategic logistical link and political alliances southward to the Indian Ocean have been the result of years of work, with many setbacks along the way for the Russian Government of President Vladimir Putin. Many of the routes of riverine traffic, roads, and railways have been evolving in Russia over the past centuries, and in Iran over the past half century or more.

The Russian and Iranian communications lines have finally meshed. The transit passage to the Indian Ocean is already functional.

A major, unifying aspect of this transportation network was the signing by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on May 17, 2023, via video-link, of a Russian-Iranian deal to finance and build the Rasht-Astara railway link as a key part of the North-South Transport Corridor. This links with the Azerbaijani rail links and northward to the Russian rail lines.

This — provided Moscow can consolidate this new access route and ensure that it can keep the clerical government in power in Iran — decides the “Great Game” for control of key areas of the Eurasian heartland, including the Caucasus, Iran, and Central Asia, so that Russia could trade as a maritime power in the Indian Ocean.

What is significant is that the Russia-Ukraine conflict helped stimulate progress on the new trade link, partly by helping to cement Iran’s dependence on Russia. That may have been the final impetus for Teheran to abandon its traditional fears of Moscow. Significantly, too, is the fact that the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 between Britain, France, and Turkey on the one hand, and the Russian Empire on the other, served as a marker in the Great Game.

A variation, however, in the Great Game is that the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 gave independence back to the ancient khanates of Central Asia and to Azerbaijan, albeit in new geopolitical forms than before. The five Central Asian states, as well as Azerbaijan — and Afghanistan and Pakistan to the south — create a complicating dynamic in the new strategic architecture of Eurasia. So, too, does the final semi-submission of modern Turkey, like clerical Iran, to Moscow.

Nonetheless, the viable combination of rail, road, riverine, and sea links, known as the International North-South Transport Corridor, provides the ability to ship freight from St. Petersburg, on the Baltic Sea in north-western Russia, via Moscow to Astrakhan (or Makhachkala [formerly Petrovskoye] in the Russian Dagestan region) on the northern Caspian coastline, thence by rail via Azerbaijan, or sea to Iran’s southern Caspian coast, and on to Bandar Abbas and possibly Chahbahar on Iran’s Arabian Sea coastline. This has ensured that Russia can now securely bypass, when necessary, its old Atlantic, Black Sea/Mediterranean, and Red Sea ocean routes.

Riverine heavy ship traffic has long been underway from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan and into the Caspian, and in 2015 a 155.8 meter cargo ship with only a 3.4 meter draught, proved the route for roll-on/roll-off shipping on the route. There are multiple road links, as well, from Astrakhan southward through Russian Dagestan and Azerbaijan to Iran, but the most straightforward proposition may well involve the ability to move containerized traffic from Russia via ships to Iranian rail and road links southward to Bandar Abbas (at the Strait of Hormuz), and presumably, Chabahar, further east in Iranian Sistan and Baluchistan province on the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean.

The new capability starts the process of diminishing the monopoly of the Egyptian-controlled Suez Canal in dominating East-West trade links (it presently takes some 12 percent of world maritime trade).

This is something which could also be further diminished by a proposed two-stream Israeli canal — the Ben Gurion Canal — from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea. Even in this arena, the West’s grasp on the security of the Red Sea (vital to both the Suez and Ben Gurion canals) has slipped significantly in the past two years.

Moreover, the Russian new route is likely to open up the Iranian economy which would benefit significantly from transit fees and from its ability to be a key market and supplier in the trading system, while that route and the Israeli Ben Gurion Canal offer the forecast of a reduction in Egyptian transit revenues from the Suez Canal.

The St. Petersburg to the Indian Ocean route is already a practical proposition, eliminating much of the U.S. and NATO attempts to constrain Russia strategically into northern and Arctic ports.

Moreover, Russia, by making India the terminus of the North-South Transport Corridor, has curbed India’s role as a competitor to Russia in the Central Asian region, and reversing India’s original position — as part of the British end of the Great Game — as the great opponent of Russian southward expansion. This move significantly strengthens Moscow’s hand in its competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for domination of Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa.

The next step would be to ensure Russian control or lease of an ocean terminus in Bandar Abbas, on Iran’s Arabian Sea coast just outside the Strait of Hormuz, perhaps through a free-port and possible naval base, to help secure onward ocean trade to India and South-East Asia. The Russian naval (and air) basing at Tartus, in Syria, is a model for such a support base. Or perhaps it would be feasible to build such a naval facility in Chahbahar, to the East of Bandar Abbas.

The failure of the U.S., in particular, to support the Shah of Iran in 1978-79 was directly responsible for the seizure of control of Iran by the anti-Western Shi’a clergy in 1979, taking even the Soviets by surprise. Neither were they ready for the collapse of the Shah nor the ensuing hostility of the clerics to the West. Moscow, under the Soviets, and later the Russians, struggled to overcome the centuries of hostility toward Russia from Iran, stemming in large part from the Russian wars of conquest of the Persian lands of Central Asia and up to the Caucasus.

Today, the Caspian Sea in the heart of the Eurasian landmass is rapidly becoming the hub, or cross-section, of vital trade routes which will significantly impact the global balance of power and determine the emergence of the next major power. The streamlined new rail, road, and sea transport corridor which crosses and follows the Caspian Sea from North to South links Russia, through Iran, to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea on the Indian Ocean.

It signifies that Russia has finally broken free from its historical geopolitical containment and has forged a stable and secure corridor to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean after centuries of the Great Game by Great Britain — via British India — and Iran, to stem Russian expansion in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

In essence, the Great Game has been decided for the moment, and Russia has its victory. Iran and India — once part of the British Empire — are now firmly part of the trade link which has Moscow’s toes settled into the warm waters of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.

It has been a slow process for Moscow, but it has been progressing consistently despite such distractions as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with the West hardly paying attention. It has also secured for Moscow a degree of independence from its enforced trade union with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

This means that Iran, after centuries of predations by Moscow into the old Persian Empire, is now successfully in the embrace of Russia, thanks to the protection Moscow provides the ruling Iranian clerics from both Western hostility and the restlessness of the Iranian population. And India, a consistent trading partner of Russia since Indian independence in 1947, is a major destination for the North-South Transport Corridor which has — at the end of the Bandar Abbas or Chahbahar to India sea link — its terminus in Mumbai, on the Arabian Sea.

India has long been privy to the ambitions of Moscow to complete the North-South Transport Corridor, and this would explain the steadfast refusal of the Indian Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to join the U.S. in sanctions and criticisms of Russia in the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Moreover, the progress anticipated in the Corridor implies a de facto alliance between Russia and India, which creates a new three-way framework of power competition in Eurasia between Russia, the PRC, and India.

The Ukraine conflict, meanwhile, is key to continued Russian access to the Black Sea, and traffic can be vectored from the Black Sea region across the Caucasus — with or without Georgian participation — to the International North-South Transport Corridor. That could also include Ukrainian exports, if the conflict is resolved, and shippers want to avoid going south from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and then through the Suez Canal.

In February 2021, the Modi government recommitted to the construction of the Chahbahar to Zahedan railway project, originally agreed in 2016. An MoU was signed between Indian Railways’ IRCON and Iranian Railways’ Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company (CDTIC). This accord would substantially upgrade the Chahbahar port, and the rail link north to Zahedan (also in Sistan and Baluchistan province of Iran, abutting Pakistani Baluchistan and Afghan Baluchistan) would give India the ability to trade into Afghanistan and Central Asia without having to cross Pakistani territory. Indeed, it was meant to build India’s access to Iran and Central Asia in a way which would move to the strategic rear of Pakistan.

The inexorable growth of the Russian networks into the Central Asian and Iran rail, road, and port networks justifies the intense efforts which Moscow — under the Soviets and later under the Russians — has made to build trade into South-East Asia, and particularly with Indonesia. Jakarta was always seen as a hub of Sino-Soviet competition since the immediate post-World War II period, and it is likely again to be an area of intense Sino-Russian competition in the coming few years.

But for now there are benefits for all players — Russia, Iran, India, the PRC, and Central Asia — from cooperation. Pakistan, significantly, on June 11, 2023, received its first shipment of Russian oil: 45,000 tonnes aboard the Russian tanker, Pure Point, went to Karachi for Pakistan Refinery Ltd., with another 50,000 tonnes due before the end of June 2023. It was paid for in <em>yuan</em> (RMB), cementing the move away from dollar payments and therefore outside the scope of U.S. sanctions pressures.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the arrival of the Russian crude a “transformative day” for Pakistan. “I have fulfilled another of my promises to the nation,” he said. “This is the first-ever Russian oil cargo to Pakistan and the beginning of a new relationship between Pakistan and [the] Russian Federation.”

The expanding North-South Transport Corridor also embraces the Central Asian states. Rail links already connect Iranian ports in the south with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Caspian News noted on November 29, 2021, that “The three Caspian region countries are linked via the 917.5 km (570 mi) Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway launched in 2014. Being part of the North-South international transport corridor, the railway connects Ozen in energy-rich western Kazakhstan with Bereket-Etrek in Turkmenistan and ends in Gorgan in north-eastern Iran. In Iran, the railway is linked to the national network, making its way to the ports of the Persian Gulf and Turkey. The $620-million project was jointly funded by the governments of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and the Asian Development Bank.”

Caspian News also noted that the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) was, even by late 2021, a 7,200 km long multi-modal network of maritime, rail, and road routes to transport freight between India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Europe. The objective of the corridor was to increase trade connectivity between major cities such as Mumbai, Moscow, Baku, Astrakhan, Teheran, Bandar Abbas, Chahbahar, and Bandar Anzali (the biggest port on the Iranian Caspian coast). The aim of the corridor was not just to increase trade between member countries but also to standardize tariffs and customs duties.

The complexity of the new strategic transport infrastructure makes it difficult for the five Central Asian states to act in harmony to find a way of circumventing Russian domination of their trade with the outside world, although components of the INSTC allow, for example, for Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to link through Iran to the Indian Ocean. For the moment, however, this route through Iran — without Russian control — would place Central Asian users in possible confrontation with the U.S., because of Washington’s formal sanctions against Iran.

This is a major constraint on the use of the INSTC by the Central Asian states, and particularly Uzbekistan, the largest of the Central Asian <em>bloc</em>, which has worked hard to build trade and investment links with the U.S. and Europe.

But, if anything, the viability of the INSTC makes more likely the evolution of a trading world which totally bypasses the U.S. and dollar-linked activities, punishing the U.S. and its Allies more than Iran or the countries which trade through it. It is now clear that the U.S. is reaching the limits of the use of sanctions as a strategic weapon to punish adversaries.

In the meantime, Uzbekistan is working — as it has no alternative but to do — with the <em>Taliban</em> controllers of Afghanistan to improve the stability of overland links south from Tashkent and through northern Afghanistan to Pakistan, and thence to the sea ports of Karachi and Gwadar. It has not abandoned use of links through Turkmenistan and East-West across the Caspian to Baku, Azerbaijan, and thence overland through Azerbaijani Nakhchivan to Turkey, and to world markets via the Mediterranean or Black seas.

It is important not to disregard the strategic rivalry implicit from Russia to the PRC in the INSTC, and Beijing still needs its faltering Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to reach European, Middle Eastern, and African markets.

It will be more difficult for the U.S. and the West to regain traction in the region, although Central Asia will continue to make determined efforts to maintain a distance from both Moscow and Beijing. How they do it is the next challenge for the regional leaders.

Free Press International
[Freedom Is Not Free!]