In 2013, China launched its One Belt One Road (OBOR) project, later rebranded Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Taking the cue from Marco Polo’s “Silk Roads,” the BRI’s initial intention was that of allowing China to export its excess capacity to neighbouring and allied countries in South-East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and eventually up to Europe. The terrestrial “Belt” was accompanied by a crucial maritime “Road,” which was also aimed at breaking China’s straitjacket represented by its inability to project its influence over the seas.
In fact, the US is totally unconstrained in its dominance of the seas, the same way the British empire was, and has made its maritime superiority a key geo-strategic lever. Conversely China needs to break the maritime constraints posed by the presence of many other countries off its coasts: Japan, North and South Korea, the Philippines, only to name a few. Opening a commercial road, through various ports purchased or built in key countries along the BRI, allowed China to also establish a military presence over the seas, at the very least to defend its legitimate commercial interests.
The US reacted to that move by establishing the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was conceived by the Obama administration, subsequently abandoned by the Trump administration, and eventually revived by Japan – without the US – under the name of Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Meanwhile, the BRI became an instrument to impose “slave contracts” to adhering countries, that found themselves in a debt trap with China (e.g. Sri Lanka). The BRI was also used by China to export (and impose) its technology to the countries along the way via the so-called “Digital Silk Road Initiative,” launched in 2015.
With an inexcusable delay of around ten years, the G7 countries reacted to China’s BRI by launching their Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), a USD 600bn investment plan, that is supposed to offer an alternative to China’s BRI and its associated debt traps. Last week, at the G20 meeting in New Delhi, the G7 agreed to create a logistical counterparty to the PGII, i.e. the so-called “India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor,” i.e. a railway network designed to provide reliable and cost-effective cross-border ship-to-rail transit, complementing existing maritime and road transport routes passing through India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Italy, France and Germany.
This new strategic corridor excludes Turkey, a country that is between Europe and the Middle East, is a NATO member while being closer to Russia even after the invasion of Ukraine and has sided with China in its “space race” against the US. For this reason, Turkey is now proposing an alternative corridor, the Iraq Development Road, which foresees the participation of Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar and the UAE, together with Turkey. Besides all these corridors, there’s also the so-called “North-South Transport Corridor,” signed between India, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia in September 2020, and which connects these three countries.
All these initiatives show the importance of establishing new “corridors” to make sure that goods and technology will continue to be efficiently transported and exported even in presence of balkanised supply and value chains, which are a distinctive feature of the ongoing Cold War 2 between US and China.
