South China Morning Post on Oct. 4 noted the great potential significance of President Donald Trump’s having then just signed a permit for U.S. border crossing of the Alberta-to-Alaska Railroad — projected to be built between now and the middle of this decade — in an article entitled, “Bering Strait Tunnel: Pipe Dream or Game-Changer for U.S.-Russia-China Ties?” EIR noted the same significance in a brief report at the time; this week, EIR’s online weekly magazine will publish a fuller treatment of this promise in an article by Robert Hux and Marcia Merry Baker, on the prospects for the railroad known as “A2A.”
SCMP wrote, “When U.S. President Donald Trump bestowed his approval on a new $22 billion, 2,400km railway between the United States and Canada last month, it brought a glimmer of hope to an even bigger and bolder infrastructure project. The idea of joining up the far east of Russia with the far north of the U.S. – either by tunnel or bridge – has been tantalizing engineers, entrepreneurs and downright dreamers since the end of the 19th century…. The Trump-approved Alaska to Alberta, or A2A, rail project is being hailed as an important link in the chain across the apex of the Pacific Rim, one that could eventually spawn a vast transport network connecting Asia directly with the Americas, through the strait.” It quoted Fyodor Soloview, founder of the InterBering firm based in Anchorage, “The [Bering Strait Tunnel] project’s a long way from breaking ground, but the announcement about A2A is a great step forward.” https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3103997/bering-strait-tunnel-pipe-dream-or-game-changer-us-russia-china?
Just as important, “While the link would augment China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative, prompting concerns from the U.S. – which is involved in a trade battle with China and views the Belt and Road Initiative as a leveraged power play – its potential long-term benefits would most likely be seen by all concerned parties as an eventual boon.” Again, Dr. Soloview: “The other big benefit would be the aspect of international cooperation and future dependence of the participating countries, that is the U.S., Canada, Russia, and China.”
And President Trump’s pushing off an Alberta-to-Alaska railroad into the north wind is, in fact, a worldwide step, because the potential “A2A” is one of the launchers for what Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, decades ago, gave the name of World Land-Bridge — connectivity of the freight transport systems of Eurasia and Africa with that of the Americas, and possibility of continuous passenger travel across Eurasia and down through the Americas to Tierra del Fuego. A tremendous leap in the physical economic development of the “inland” regions of the continents; the replacement of slow ocean shipping with rapid rail travel for container goods; stimulation of economic development in high-speed rail corridors, and in and across river basins, TVA-style.
Gradually some credit instruments for these transformative projects have been stood up during the Trump term: the ExIm Bank re-established on a broader and longer footing, the new International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) now permitted to help finance nuclear power projects of all kinds. But these remain small credit channels compared to the immediate need for increased food production and transport against COVID-triggered famine and for new hospitals and clinics across developing countries, let alone the kind of physical economic development promised by LaRouche’s World Land-Bridge.
So his broad, “Hamiltonian” (or “Leibnizian”) economic policies must be used. And this burst of development, which will reawaken American manufacturing and technological progress, can’t be done without a joint effort by the major technological powers. It will require a new international credit system from the United States, China, Russia, India and other powers — keeping out London’s financial empire. City of London elites and co-thinkers have opposed all signs of the World Land-Bridge since the LaRouche’s first put it forward more than 30 years ago.
EIR’s article is “President Trump’s Border-Crossing-Permit for the Alaska-to-Alberta Railway: Will 2020 Be the Year Mankind Walks through the Door to the World Land-Bridge?” for its issue dated Oct. 31.
