Strait on till morning

Back in 2007, a mere two months after the seminal Putinnywise’s speech at 43rd Munich Security Conference, which had marked the opening, albeit still rhetorical, shots of the Cold War 2.0, Russian government unveiled grandiose plan of the Bering Strait crossing tunnel. There, the land of Russia meets the Pacific and Arctic Oceans at the same time — and the US border.

First in the current century, but far from visionary — disclosed almost exactly one hundred years after a similar link had been given royal assent by Nicholas II, — this scheme aimed at recreation of the land bridge through which humans settled Americas. It went the way of the dodo, or, more precisely, joined the equally ambitious project of Russia’s 3-Helium mines on the Moon in the dustbins of balmy economic history predating the Great Recession.

Russian missions to Jupiter moons, Phobos, Mercury, or Venus shared the Moonbase’s destiny.

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Now back down to Earth. Recently, there has been greenlighted another ambitious bridge project that hearkens back to the underlying rock of ages:

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the Strait of Messina bridge, which follows concepts courtesy of the Roman Empire and Mussolini’s Italy road engineers.

It should be noted that the significantly longer Crimean Bridge, which Ukraine sought in vain to destroy during the middle stages of the proxy WWIII against Russia, has been constructed by Russians in a much lesser time than the Messina Bridge, masked as a part of Italy’s military budget ballooning, is projected to require.

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In 1945, FDR had been inclined to seek for a more beneficial interaction on a basis other than the one pitted against Old Soviet Russia using McCarthyism, NATO, contingency plans (Operation Unthinkable, Operation Dropshot, etc.) and other shit.

It’s a pity we never saw his solutions, or at least some form of the Baruch plan, being implemented in a coordination with Old Soviet Russia.

Russian collusion hoax being methodically dismantled, the Dem Party, which claims FDR’s legacy (though hardly could be traced back to him without any dotted lines or myelin-sheath gaps in the interim), will be left in quite a precarious situation on the next turn of the spiral.

I, for one, will have been happy to see the Dems split at clearly visible seams, but what feels more interesting ahead of the Alaska summit is that we have palpable, though still not a big one, chance to witness an event which, in a sense, would undermine a big part of all “containment of Russia” policy set in motion by neocons as far back as in the times of Truman.

Now, a similar “containment of China” strategy inside the same Kissinger’s triangle is clearly failing right out of the gate; but still, it is Russia who never ceases to inspire, in neocons’ minds, treatments similar to what Su Xun in his Discourses on Six Kingdoms (六國論) gave Qin from before the First Unification of China:

然則諸侯之地有限，暴秦之欲無厭，奉之彌繁，侵之愈急

The lands of the zhuhou were limited, while the desire of tyrannical Qin was insatiable. The more frequent they offered Qin tributes, the hastier Qin invaded them.

Hardly a year passed in all time since 1991 without sanctions against Russia of different varieties, even back when Russo-American relations were as dominant for the US as possible. Lo and behold, the territorial conflict for the heartland (not a colony, for Ukraine never has been the one) of the Old Soviet empire emerges as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, if the US nowadays already fails to “contain” the main apex of the Kissinger’s triangle, what would they do against two, standing back to back out of necessity, driven into such a configuration by the very weaponized tariffs The Once and Future Trump (47th edition) tried on them?

This is a question which evidently bounces back and forth inside the minds of Trumpist faction Sinophobic strategists, mainly Elbridge A. Colby and his ilk.

It will not bring much surprise to me if the megaproject of sorts The Once and Future Trump (47th edition) prefers — Bering Strait bridge or tunnel — be announced.

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Especially looking at the ongoing (since 2024) construction of another great bridge, over Lena river in Yakutia, that would link essentially all of Yakutia and Chukotka to the rest of the Russian road network.

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However, it’s not at all clear whence the money and resources needed for the construction derive.

After all, Russia’s economy is said to have been repeatedly shattered to pieces by crippling sanctions since 2014.

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Heavenly questions abound. Like I have noted a few times, one can’t sell the Moon, or rather Mars, without breaking a couple of dearest golden eggs.

Bright side up, in English, unlike Chinese, there shall be no need to rebrand the Moon according to a taboo on sharing names with a current state leader. In Chinese, though, the Moon is female. And she has no cats, only a rabbit.