Eurasian Railroad Development

in a bit saner world...

Beijing to London freight delivery in 2 days as well as peaceful integration of Middle Eastern economies are some of many possibilities. Recent APEC meeting in Vladivostok should accelerate the long awaited development of Trans-Asian Railway project. 




Developing infrastructure has always been risky if you're not well protected by geography or by standing armies. The German-Ottoman/Baghdad-Berlin railroad link construction plans threatened British shipping interests and thus helped start the 20th century. And as Libyan experience shows, any small country outside Western alliances determined to become the "next Norway" of this or that particular region has a high chance of being bombarded by warplanes.

Having said that, transportation links are as essential as monetary unions when it comes to strengthening regional political integration. This point has been brought so often on this site that we may as well be called The Infrastructuralist. In fact, current political gridlock and disunity within USA would be a lot less intense if this union put as much effort into high speed freight/passenger delivery as is usually put into decades long military occupations. Transcontinental railroad continued being built even during American civil war and was instrumental in political integration of United States. That was big for its time but the key issue of the 21st century is connecting and creating harmony between the various poles of the multipolar world.

This primarily means socioeconomic and cultural integration of Asia and the West the way California, Texas, and New York (and more recently, France and Germany) have been united by transport. Elites understand the supranational symbiosis that transportation links bring and even the potential for a larger and more dynamic economy to swallow up neighbors. Because of that, we often even see reluctance to begin projects such as the Korea-Japan undersea tunnel even if it is mutually enriching.

Such notions need to be put to rest. Fears of freight links are not the same as fears of removing all trade protectionism. Tight railroad links and busy rail arteries can co-exist wonderfully with 20% tariffs (as shown by repeated successes of protectionism over the last 200 years). What is more dangerous than easy freight movement among neighbors is not so much mutual digestion by historical enemies. The danger is that lack of cooperation on transnational freight movements creates:

1) Economic and popular disharmony potentially leading to violence (some blood vessels in the regional body blocked, some deprived, some oversaturated, some non-existent, etc. inefficiencies, inequalities, bottlenecks, and chaos is the order of the day)

2) Stops spin off processes from getting off the ground whether economic (creating cooperation where economies of scale can be tapped) or political war averting ones (see below)

Full high speed railroad Eurasian integration is the obvious next step that United Nations saw as an essential violence preventing project for the largest land mass on earth. Projects of this nature always require soothing relations beforehand. Obviously Pakistan and India need to find ways to cooperate, as well as South and North Korea, Japan and Russia, Japan and South Korea, Iran and Arab neighbors, Israel and Egypt, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia, Turkey and Russia, and Afghanistan sufficiently stabilized so as not to build railroads and pipelines around it.

In effect, in a world with nuclear weaponry, the shareholders of various railroad monopolies have to pressure for peace in order to get more business. High level governmental working groups approaching something as mundane as transborder high speed railroad development create a foot in the door towards preconditions for peace. Seoul and Pyongyang seem to be the early adopters of this understanding with railroad construction connecting their two countries (along with a free trade zone lubricating the project) being used as an ignition towards eventual reunification. Although some critics point to France and Germany being the most interconnected in terms of transportation in 1913, interdependence before conflict appears more of a historical exception rather than the rule.

post-scarcity civilization will think of how to tap
and transport resources from still
overlooked northern peripheries

Considering the current historical conditions in the Middle East (a patchwork of barely consolidated "states" each in its own historic development that roughly mirrors Europe anywhere from 1850s to early 20th century), a supranational government approach combined with links to indigenous civil society and business groups with infrastructuralist mindset and demands is essential to potentially prevent early 20th century Europe 2.0.

Let's quote from a previous article that compared 3 fastest rail lines in the world to better grasp a future Eurasian land bridge.

"The "best" is determined here by a combination of:

A) Average speed in between terminating points since the faster the distance covered, the more a train system cuts into air industry's profits. This in turn pushes airplane makers to conceptualize cheap travel by hypersonic passenger aircraft which in turn benefits humanity.

B) The distance that the high speed line covers since the longer the line, the bigger the project in terms of resources and parts and the more economies of scale are utilized. A society's commitment to triggering economies of scale for heavy industry shows its determination to improving the welfare of its citizens. Ultimately, going as big as possible with infrastructure projects (see Erie, Panama, Suez Canals and Transcontinental/Trans-Siberian railroads) is not just cheaper but creates mass employment (during transition to post-scarcity mechanization), rapidly stimulates real physical economy, and gives a super boost in wealth creation."

Industrial cartels behind the Chinese government also seem interested in free trade zones at the end of 3 major high speed Eurasian railways that are being proposed. India and southeast Asia being China's South America and Russia being China's Canada appears the immediate future for the region. Beijing needs to approach the situation in an integrative developmental language that FDR would have used to build common prosperity and avoid the imperialist mindset. The possibilities of freight entering North Korea from Russian Federation and then entering South Korean land to continue on via the underwater tunnel to Japanese consumers would do more for peace than 6 party talks ever did. Recent decision by the Kremlin to forgive 11 billion dollars of North Korean debt appears to be part of this particular mission. Energy and transportation projects can go through when borders are finally delineated and decades long issues forgiven. The Christian Orthodox Patriarch on a visit to Poland recently used the word he considered the most important. It was "forgiveness".

An economically booming region connected by Beijing, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, Pyongyang finally healing with high speed transport links would be an example to follow across the world from central Europe to Middle East to Africa. It is said people get used to a good thing very quickly and the Customs Union between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan demonstrates that as passengers don't worry about being searched and stopped as their train crosses the border. As Mexico continues to grow in economic power, eventually the planners behind North American Union need to consider similar easing of restrictions and add high speed rail in addition to the high speed highway linking the continent.

Besides break of gauge, the way high speed tracks should be constructed should take into account possible future conversion to Mag-Lev standard. This means wide clearance around the track to allow parallel Mag-Lev construction once sufficient number of fission reactors are built to support it. Dual use construction or built in expansion for potential dual use is essential. Any type of transcontinental infrastructure built in 21st century should have major upgrades in mind to save on costs. Historically, once a major project begins, the tools for it itch to find use elsewhere as the pipe laying ships for Nord Stream already want to be used to lay pipes between Russian far east and South Korea and Japan. Initial investor capital creates a critical mass and a snowball effect for specialized machinery built for the original task. Governments and sovereign wealth funds are essential to create this type of ignition. Elites like Sarkozy, various think tanks, and The Pragmatist itself have already discussed an international Tobin tax to fund a truly global infrastructure development bank. It would rapidly help in what was previously thought as unapproachable "mega" projects such as terraforming the Sahara Desert, Gobi Desert, Central Asian Desert, etc.

2-3 trillion dollars (or 4% of world's GDP) to properly connect the far East and Western Europe will rapidly pay for itself through reversal of austerity mindsets, direct energy savings for the most populous landmass on earth, airplane construction cartels finally pushed towards development of cheap hypersonic freight and passenger jets, and greater lubrication for business than even economic and monetary unions. Even if European Union got its finances in order, it wouldn't function well if people still used horses and buggies. At the risk of the article sounding like another high speed commercial, there are also possibilities for passenger (and even freight trains!) that are always in motion and that unload their cargo onto another regional/city train system. Schemes like this can make high speed function smoothly with normal speed as well as allow experiments for non-stop high speed train systems of smaller size to operate within large urban areas.

As Immanuel Wallerstein's World Systems Theory and global climate change efforts (requiring world climate system approach) take hold in popular imagination, we'll see world systems finally applied to planetary transport and energy grids as we progress further.

Outline for Future International Development

The Pragmatist has accumulated enough articles to attempt a general developmental outline for the world until 2050. Version 1.0





Such outline can be likened to an invisible statue on which drops of paint have been randomly thrown one at a time over the last 2 years. The paint drops are of different sizes and some statue parts have been disproportionately hit. Nevertheless, parts of some tangible form can be discerned at this point. Both deconstructive pieces on what fails (unfortunately roughly 2/3 due to necessity) and constructive ones (on what to have instead) help with this project. This is a sort of a wiki meta article and will be the most linked.

The outline is not born out of wishful or idealist thinking but rather out of attempts to forecast where the world is headed anyway, what makes sense via process of elimination, and what is in the strategic self interest of powerful individuals who run the planet. In other words, this outline tries to conceptualize a summary of solutions to some problems troubling not just all the peoples of the world but a forward thinking faction of the international elites. Solutions must be roughly compatible with the thrust of "reality" in order to be grafted onto it and transform it.

A lot of things covered will be very general and seem rather familiar exactly for that reason. Much will also appear fantastical, overly far reaching, and idealist. That is simply due to the still underappreciated and mind boggling technology spawned possibilities of the 21st century post-capitalist world (move to post-scarcity civilization will be more drastic than was the move to agricultural civilization from hunter gather one). It is funny how people who fully understand and believe in eventuality of cybernetic augmentation also miss out on macro level possibilities of post-money, post-wage slavery, post-scarcity, and post-financial parasitism.

There is also the sheer magnitude of the threats that we must avoid no matter what.

What to avoid at all costs?

A) Nuclear world war (for reasons ranging from imperialism to severe resource inequality resulting in a sort of planetary "civil war" between united cosmopolitan haves and united cosmopolitan have nots)

B) Technological singularity arriving into a world as severely unequal as it is right now (in terms of resources available to some homo sapiens versus others). We do not know when the singularity will happen but we should work with 2040-2050 as the deadline to complete much egalitarianism building preparatory work in the socioeconomic sphere. It is to be understood that the environment must be set up where everybody has the right, ability, and cultural maturity to receive free genetic and cybernetic augmentation as soon as it becomes available.

"Economic" (to be replaced with Technocratic) 


Replacement of the failed field of economics with engineering and science. Focus on what physically works and building more of it. This means mass scale infrastructuralist thrust by every center of force on earth. Elites are to be judged on their ability to build infrastructure and innovate construction methods of building it. This also means a constant and flexible integration of parts of diverse systems that work from every society on the globe and constant mutual learning. Not one model is to be held as the right one in its totality and the entire world is to be considered equally developing. This thinking is to be applied to energy production first in order to make everything else possible.

Exponential construction of energy sources growing a lot faster than human population at all times. Emphasis on nuclear (fission/fusion) and complementary solar/space based solar. This engineering/scientific thinking is to be applied to politics and the social sphere as well (a 21st equivalent of the efficiency movement on steroids to take into account all the cutting edge research).

The base for development is to be units of energy and mass of resources instead of incoherent abstraction (gambling houses like the NYSE or fiat monetarism). Total discrediting of Anglo-style imperialist monetarist capitalism (and its rich man's propaganda libertarian offshoots) will make technocratic central planning thought mainstream in 10 years time. You've read it here first. Much of what The Pragmatist covered will be mainstream and widely accepted pattern of thought in 10 years time. We already see rapid popularization of 1920s-1930s Technocratic Movement memes via widely culturally disseminated attempts like the Zeitgeist movement. These efforts will be copied, elaborated on, marketed for specific regions, etc.

Some healthy competition among technocratic theorists will arise. This will lead to basic conceptual convergence and synthesis while advocating some decentralization to suit cultural needs of localities. A grand bargain will be struck with a faction of elites holding on to the old neoliberal model of globalization in order to phase it out peacefully and gradually (more on this later). Much of the current "dissident" movement and its arguments is rabidly reactionary and will not make it past the smell test in the future.

Social: Renaissance/Enlightenment 2.0

Constantly awakening humanity at large will help with and will be helped by the above. For things like transcontinental MagLev lines, modular cities, and vertical farming grids to be of the highest quality, the human populations building them should be excited and dedicated. Switching to long term thinking and mass scale planetary construction projects provides a tangible life affirming vision for the human herd. This is essential to reduce the severe nihilism caused by vacuum from death of major religions, ideologies (with corresponding reliance on ready made models), and trust in political leaders (realization they are hairless often borderline psychopathic monkeys like the rest).

A call for mass public works projects is a call for humanity to rise to the challenge and figure itself out as well. To provide very comfortable post-scarcity high energy civilization and to begin colonization of the solar system, the people developing it must be developed on an individual level as well (morally, physically, psychologically, and intellectually). Not only will individuals see progress rise before their eyes but they will reap rewards from it immediately.

Infrastructure helps humans to have more leisure time and thus time to self educate themselves even further. This means it helps provide a social thrust towards a much more egalitarian world. Eventually, every homo sapien must have nutritious food and shelter as a basic right among other things. This is basic common sense in a mechanizing world where less than 500 million workers are needed to provide all the world's goods and services. These expanded rights will further allow leisure time for the new Renaissance to develop.

Although there are physiological differences creating limits to human equality, these same differences also provide for a limit on how unequal (in terms of access to resources) the homo sapiens should get. By the time first transhuman breakthroughs begin to occur (cybernetic and genetic augmentations, real A.I., etc) the humans with the most resources should not get more than 10 times those with the least resources. This means that the well off among 8-9 billion hairless apes should have their resources limited to 5-10 times those below them by 2050. This covers size and space of shelter, amount of travel, amount of electric energy, etc.

The best way to achieve this is to make the rise in quality/quantity of resource base of highest ranking members pegged to quality/quantity of resource base of lowest. If top workers have 1000 units of energy available to them, they can get 1100 of units next year IF they raise the amount of units available to bottom workers from 100 to 110. Since the new elites are to be laboring technocrats (engineers/scientists, elites who have to work for privileges instead of living off rents) they would be in position to go about doing just that.

Lets remind the reader that all of this is done to avoid nuclear world war born of inequality or cybernetic implants arriving on the scene of severe inequality leading to the same (first humans to be upgraded may perceive the rest of the herd the way one perceives the mentally retarded). Inequitable distribution of cybernetic/genetic augmentation on top of education/resource inequality would lead to tyranny and horror the world has not seen yet. Efforts to provide shelter and food to all (with corresponding leisure time opening for education) must begin immediately. This will create a virtuous multi-generational cycle of tension reduction although it may not seem that way at first however (as millions become conscious of just how much monstrous inequality there really is).


Politics: The world is to be thought of as one country in the process of unification and consolidation

1) This is key to fully allow for the infrastructuralist vision mentioned above. Efforts to rapidly close the gap between resource availability of best off and worst off must be plainly and bluntly articulated by every political leadership. The reasons for these efforts (to avoid WW3 or violent planetary insurgency) must also be articulated constantly with the same bluntness. All the world's land is to be thought of as belonging to humanity collectively (in practice to world federation of sovereigns or supra sovereign unions). This, in addition to shelter as human right will go a long way towards freeing most of humanity from the political domination of the feudal land lords. Governments are to be understood as being the ultimate landowners whereas the shelter itself is to be owned completely and inalienably by the individuals.

2) The current neoliberal model of third worldification of the first world and first worldification of the third world has done its job to internationally equalize a bit and to spread the wealth around but has now run its course. The time has come to equalize between bottom 10% and top 10% in every region. The global inflationary fiat casino experiment is crashing to an end and will wipe out a lot of wealth of the top 1% (much of it artificial to begin with). The 1% will be vulnerable for a time and provide an opening for central planners and sovereign states to make a comeback and to confiscate oligarch assets, tax, redirect anger from bottom to top, etc.

Although sovereign governments will make a comeback against financial oligarchies, they will understand that planetary unification of sorts within various unions is desirable for reasons of peace, history, and economies of scale (link up publicly owned industrial giants and their resource chains). However, as much as nation state haters may object, it may not be possible to "E.U.fy" every monopoly on violence. That is healthy as long as nuclear stand offs are not allowed to develop.

3) Quality of political leadership is to be rigidly monitored and constantly improved. It is not enough to make people who build and work into our leaders (engineering technocrats instead of current leaders who are shareholders in financial and weapons multinationals). To prudently approach and tackle the solutions to the monstrous problems facing us, we need to keep improving the art of selecting the technocrats. It is advisable that world leaders have live public debates and discussions with each other as often as possible. Populations should compete when it comes to the quality of their leaderships.

A sort of debate/discussion Olympics for world leaders would help. That is something to boast about. "Our president is the most skillful when it comes to applying the cutting edge methods for rapid construction of fusion plants!" "Our prime minister is on the forefront of education reform and shelter construction, we have eliminated homelessness first". Replacement of the dangerous nationalisms and celebrity worship with pride in builders and those apes that improve the herd the quickest (notice I said improve not just make comfortable). Democratic input will naturally find its place in a much more real way than it can ever hope in today's capitalist dictatorships. Global information networks even provide for opportunity of direct voting and discussion for the first time in thousands of years.

A New "21st Century Social Contract", "Grand Bargain", "An Offer They Cant Refuse" 

Just the way the early capitalists entered into co-existence with the feudal lords, the early technocrats will have to enter into peaceful co-existence with the capitalists. The half a billion NTs around the world who are extroverted, aggressive, thoughtful, and have access to Internet based self education for the first time will make an offer to the elites that may sound like the following:

"If you allow us to operate freely and set up regions of total operation then you will not be harmed. Although your indirect political control over the state apparatus will be greatly diminished, although most of your lands and hard assets may be seized with time, your bodies, your families, and remaining assets for comfortable retirement will not be touched. You have played the game of life well and controlled the world. Now you are obsolete and most of you will NOT face persecution for past crimes and excesses. Your children will even be allowed to seek positions in the new technocratic hierarchies. We will have a period of long co-existence where our systems overlap and function side by side and where you will still be able to have some influence. Eventually, like the monarchs of old you will fade into history as every homo sapien on earth is provided for and is no longer physically coerced into working for you.


If you choose to not take this offer you will face decades of unrest and increasing violence since we outnumber you 9,999 to 1. Numbers, technology, talent, and the tide of history is against you. You are outmatched and will lose badly. You will not find safety or honor in any shape or form anywhere you go and this planetary escalation may turn nuclear. You and your children are not guaranteed to live to see the singularity and will not be upgraded to become demigods here on earth. Take our offer of peace, progress, cooperation, and maintain control over something or face losing everything. This is in your best most "enlightened" self interest."

The educated workers will not stand for anything else or any attempts at co-opting technocracy from above. They will also flatly reject any visions that promise high tech corporate neo-feudalism under the guise of "post-industrial green society". No condescending profit based green philanthropy or oligarch backed NGO meddling either. The enduring demand of wage slaves is: shelter and food for all with supporting continental infrastructure (first in northern hemisphere and then the entire earth) to provide leisure time to further build thoughts of egalitarianism.

Attempts to divide and conquer the youth will only last so long. They are becoming too educated and impudent. Instead, time is coming where the elites will be divided among prudently technocratic and conservative neoliberal lines. Forward thinking elites will see the writing on the wall, make the right choice, and stage a comeback hoping to co-opt as much as possible. They will be younger on average than the current banker/ military general bunch. The world may have a real conversation then.

This concludes version 1.0. See you 100 articles later for version 2.0.

BRIC countries and South Africa

Looking beyond the size of its economy, it gets clearer why SA was asked to sit with the big players. Namely, key geostrategic port location and resources that allows BRIC to better compete with G7 in shaping planetary unification.





If one had to assemble a coalition of countries to serve as the backbone of an alternative future governing order, how would one go about it? Sure, the size of the economy and population would be a key initial criterion in selecting candidates but not the only one. Diversity of underlining reasons for economic strength would be a second one. Just like with humans in a group, a country coalition would function best if there were specializations among them (manufacture, IT, energy, agriculture, etc). A third criterion may be a country's ability to augment the coalition by serving as a strategic bridgehead between member states and others.

This is where Jacob Zuma comes in. Besides being an alleged rapist, he also rules a very resource rich country that also overlooks one of the 3 essential shipping lanes in the Eastern hemisphere. In fact, considering ship size limitations of the Suez Canal and the residual ice threat existing in the waters around Russia, South Africa's Cape Agulhas is likely to continue to witness many super shipping tankers in the future. One should keep in mind that some of the world's biggest tanker ship yards are now in China and that Suez Canal is not dependable since it could be closed down by hostile powers (a prospect all too real considering recent destabilizing foreign pressures on Egypt).

Here we see the 3 routes. Both South Africa and Brazil establish a sort of a beachhead in what Zbigniew Brzezinski called Eurasia's periphery. Each country opens up an entire continent to trade. In addition, both Jacob Zuma and Dilma Rousseff have independent minded socialist background and can link up other BRIC nations with similarly minded regional players like Angola, Bolivia, Uruguay, etc.

There is great symmetry to the timing. As Westerners are trying to reestablish imperial presence in Africa from the north (to counter China receiving 60%+ of the continent's resource exports), BRIC is beefing up its presence in the south. Perhaps leaders of Africa's large resource rich and multi-ethnic nations finally sense that some measure of protection is required. After all, Sudan and Libya have had their oil rich regions amputated in a very brief amount of time. Nigeria, Algeria, and SA thus have a couple things to worry about.

Additionally, Chinese military leadership is worried that NATO's divide and conquer resource grab in Africa may ultimately serve as a springboard to fan the fires already started in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan (China's ally being bombed as we speak). In other words, attempts at Balkanization in the soft underbelly of Eurasia (Central Asia) are more ominous than simple theft. Two of the BRICs have already created Shanghai Cooperation Organization (India, Pakistan, and Iran have observer status) to prevent the exactly the same thing now engulfing Libya.

It would be logical to create SCO affiliated regional security organizations with Brazil and South Africa at the helm (SA, Angola, and Nigeria for instance can unite to provide security that African Union is apparently incapable of doing). In effect, this would mirror the past practice of United States picking a local power and subcontracting regional security to it (see Indonesia and Shah's Iran during the cold war).

The strategic position of South Africa demonstrates the rapid transformation of mentality within the BRIC coalition. Many Western observers scoffed at any meaningful cooperation within this coalition due to diversity of political systems and economic strengths. Now they seem puzzled why a much smaller economy was allowed to join. However, the mere fact that a countries like Nigeria or Indonesia (fast growing, populous, adds a Muslim bridgehead for BRIC) were not invited, shows that there is a degree of consolidated forward looking geopolitical thinking within BRIC leadership. SA has the gold that China and India have been accumulating recently (Russia as well although it buys from its own mining sector) and it got the docks for mega ships.
 
The existence of such strategic movement is most likely explained by prior SCO cooperation. One should keep in mind that SCO was created to put out the foreign made fires in Central Asia (once Operation Enduring Freedom a.k.a. welfare for NATO wraps up, SCO will be doing serious clean up/overspill prevention duties). It is not surprising then that some blurring of SCO's geostrategy and BRIC trade centric strategy should happen. The two are not mutually exclusive and it stands to reason that safety and trade should go hand in hand. China, Russia, India would want to not only ultimately expel Western influence from their neighborhood but move on to peripheral areas of American empire where Washington DC is losing ground. This means Africa first (US never overcommitted itself there even during the Cold War, leaving the dirty dictator prop up work to Europeans) and Latin America second (we'll know the Imperial mortal coil is about to be shrugged off when Mexico is cooperating with BRICS).

Ultimately, if the current Washington backed revolutionary wave in the Middle East is stopped/reversed, Iran will be asked to join. If Iran is successful at forcing out US from Iraq (right now DC and Tehran appear to have an odd couple joint imperial rule over that long suffering country), then the Indian ocean and the coasts of Africa/South America will be seeing more ships resembling this, possibly protected by SCO/SCO affiliated convoys: