At a time of global tensions and geopolitical uncertainties, the Kremlin has decided to relaunch a symbolic project: a tunnel between Russia and the United States to reopen the economic dialogue. In fact, the director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev he recently proposed to Tesla owner Elon Musk the construction of a “Putin-Trump tunnel” under the Bering Straitthe stretch of sea that separates Russia from Alaska.
The idea, far from new, was relaunched as a symbol of what is possible rapprochement between the two countriestaking advantage of the technical capabilities of Boring Companythe company founded by Musk that develops underground transportation infrastructure. According to Dmitriev’s estimates, the cost of the hypothetical megaproject to connect the Siberian region of Chukotka with Alaska through a tunnel approximately 112.5 kilometers would wander around the 8 billion dollars. This figure should be interpreted as a “theoretical target”, not as a formally approved or binding cost.
Russian commentators have taken up the plan under the name of “Putin-Trump Tunnel”involving the Russian leader and the president of the United States: the American tycoon, notoriously passionate about large infrastructure works, he called the idea “interesting”. Trump was not the only one to think this way: from the American visionaries of the nineteenth century to the conspirators of the Cold War, passing through today’s emissaries of the Kremlin, the idea of physically connecting Russia and the United States through the Arctic passage has returned to the limelight several timeswith staggering costs and significant geopolitical implications.
Russia and the United States: the history of the Bering Strait Bridge
The path of this huge infrastructure project began at the beginning of the 20th century, when a syndicate of American railway magnates proposed a plan for a Siberia-Alaska railway which envisioned a tunnel under the Bering Strait and a trans-Siberian connection to the Russian city of Irkutsk. The concept was based on late nineteenth-century “Cosmopolitan Railway” thinking, the idea of a large railway network to unite and connect different cultures, and on the first proposals of the American engineer Joseph Straussknown for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. None of these projects were followed up, but they started the debate on building a railway that could reduce distances across the Arctic.
The idea of a symbolic bond between the United States and the USSR returned to the spotlight in the sixties of the twentieth century. Recently made public Russian archival documents include a map marked as World Peace Bridge which presented a vision of a physical connection between Alaska and Siberia. The idea was not symbolic: it was a concrete project for peace through tradea literal bridge between two rival systems at the height of the Cold War. While the provenance and intent are still up for debate, the documents seem to highlight how the Bering connection has long been the subject of evaluation, although more as a metaphor than as a concrete structure.
The spotlight on the Arctic passage turned on again in 2007when Russian officials promoted the project of Tkm-World Link: a 6,000 kilometer corridor with a tunnel under the strait and a total cost of almost 65 billion dollars. Then in 2008, the then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin approved a plan to extend Russia’s rail network further east, toward eastern Siberia and the Pacific, as part of a long-term development plan, and in 2011, high-level Russian officials again expressed support for the initiative. Only the strait segment would have cost between 10 and 12 billion dollarsnot to mention thousands of kilometers of railways, ports and energy infrastructure.
A few years later, too China he declared that he was considering a high-speed line that, starting from its north-east, would cross eastern Siberia, passing under the Bering Strait via an underwater tunnel of about 200 kilometers, to then arrive in Alaska and connect with the North American railway network. All these plans they remained on paper due to enormous costs, technical difficulties and geopolitical rivalries. In the United States, however, no administration never officially adopted the idea of building a link across the Bering Strait. However, in Alaska, a group of advocates led by Governor Wally Hickel long promoted an “Intercontinental Peace Bridge.”
Technical and geopolitical difficulties of the project
This infrastructure megaprojectafter the various obstacles encountered over the decades, today must answer a fundamental question for contemporary logistics: theengineering innovation can it really unite territories separated by one of the most inhospitable seas on the planet, as the climate and access to Arctic resources change? Experts have identified a series of obstacles:
- Extension. The tunnel would be the least expensive part of the project: the most expensive sections concern thousands of kilometers of new infrastructure (railways, roads, ports) across the Chukotka region and western Alaska, among the most remote and permafrost-rich territories on Earth.
- Extreme climate and geography. The region crossed presents extreme environmental conditions: persistent frost, winds, sea ice and permafrost. All of this could complicate not only construction, but also make maintenance a significant effort.
- Poor trade flows. Bilateral trade between the United States and Russia has always been modest and declined dramatically after the start of the conflict in Ukraine. Russian exports consist largely of energy and raw materials, but the United States already has plenty of these resources.
- Economics of related industries and profitability. For a tunnel or railway of this size to make economic sense, there must be significant passenger or freight traffic. But the mere idea of transporting Russian Arctic resources to the United States (also feasible by sea) does not in itself guarantee the economic return of such an immense infrastructure.
If technological innovation will perhaps allow the construction of the tunnel, a series of unknowns remain on the table: Who will use this infrastructure, with what traffic, and above all… with what income? Without a precise answer to these questions, it seems that this project will continue to remain an certainly suggestive, but purely theoretical, idea.
