An Open Door in the High North: Commercial Trade & Its International Ramifications

Russia's BRICS courtship in the Arctic has become a prominent topic in contemporary geopolitics and can be visualized as an open invitation for partner countries to explore and contribute to the region's significant maritime routes and natural resources. However, Moscow's deliberate push to broaden its alliances through non-polar countries, while still strengthening its "comprehensive partnership" with Beijing, demonstrates more than just a diplomatic shift. It is a by-product of an underlying anxiety concerning overreliance on China. Notably, this diversification strategy is a symptom of an asymmetric interdependence between the two countries, particularly in the context of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) or polar silk road. The Arctic turns out to be a new territory for this dynamic, and to understand any game's pattern, it's important to examine its previous moves. Similarly, Pakistan has already been a part of the China playbook, just under a different name.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine resulted in extensive sanctions from the US and Western nations and increased isolation for Russia in the global arena, including the Arctic Council. This pushed Moscow to adopt a geoeconomic strategy centered on leveraging the Russian Arctic by advancing alliances and expanding cooperation with non-Western countries, particularly through BRICS, including China, India, and Brazil, as well as close ally Belarus – in research, economics, infrastructure, and energy.^{4 5} This shift is publicly portrayed as a move away from a China-centric approach toward a broader coalition of "friendly countries."⁶ While strategic interests and actual movements in the Arctic suggest otherwise, raising questions about the authenticity of the BRICS outreach. Brazil's and Belarus's engagement in the Arctic remains nominal; beyond diplomatic participation, there are limited examples of active collaboration in infrastructure and investment. India's Arctic cooperation with Russia predates 2022. The 2019 Chennai-Vladivostok maritime corridor, a bilateral initiative between India and Russia, reflected New Delhi's independent pursuit of alternative connectivity.⁸ Most recently, its growing interest in using the NSR is not merely an expansion of cooperation under the latter initiative but also indicative of its strategic calculation regarding China, which is viewed as a strategic competitor – aiming to ensure that Russia does not become overly dependent on Beijing.^{1 3 7} While India has a clear national interest in the region, its approach remains cautious and selective, often described as "situational trade."

China's Arctic ambitions can be analyzed through the Polar Silk Road, a trade and connectivity project that runs along Russia's Arctic coast, the NSR. Although Moscow controls the NSR waters, it depends on China for financial assistance. This fuels Russia's growing unease about China being the sole operator in the joint development of the NSR, as Beijing holds greater economic weight than the coalition members, especially in investments, shipping, and infrastructure. Consequently, this asymmetry creates an uneven interdependence that puts the cohesiveness of the BRICS as a bloc at stake. Moreover, given China's initiative, the Polar Silk Road has recently moved from just a concept, first appearing in the 2018 white paper, into an operational reality. The Chinese shipping company, Sea Legend, launched its first scheduled container service, with its first vessel sailing from China to Europe via Russia's Northern Sea Route NSR, cutting transit time to 20-22 days.^{2 9} That usually takes 40-plus days from the Suez Canal or the Strait of Hormuz. Chinese official media has justified its motive for creating an alternative route by claiming that this shift is due to ongoing instability at existing routes.

The NSR, as an emerging alternative maritime corridor, poses competitive pressure on the Suez Canal and other chokepoints in the Gulf, which carry most of the world's trade. Including instability from wars in the Gulf and Houthi attacks in the Suez Canal, trade has been disrupted, with traffic showing a steady decline. This poses a potential risk to Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries because it could erode their chokepoint leverage and the rent revenue they have built up to date. However, it is not perceived as an immediate threat or a full replacement yet, as it's seasonal and requires expensive infrastructure.

China's avoidance of conventional chokepoints to reduce dependence, complemented by expanding influence through economic strategies, follows the same structural pattern in the Arctic as it did earlier in Pakistan's Gwadar and CPEC.¹² Pakistan leverages Gwadar to gain economic opportunities; meanwhile, China gains an alternative land route, bypassing the Strait of Malacca, thus reducing its Malacca dilemma and promoting its influence in the region – a counterweight to India. In the same way, Russia controls the NSR, while China aims to bypass the Suez and Hormuz straits via the Polar Silk Road project in the NSR, along with making a "gradual autonomy in the Arctic." This is exactly what Russia fears: the same old China playbook unfolding, driven by its historical tributary system.^{10 11}

China, in partnership with Pakistan, introduced the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) under its broader BRI framework to deepen economic cooperation focused on trade, connectivity, and development projects. CPEC appeared as a "game changer" and "fate changer" for Pakistan, contributing to the country's economic development through major infrastructure and energy projects, including Gwadar Port, the corridor's core. However, it left the country with a serious CPEC-linked external debt of 22 percent, making Islamabad involuntarily dependent on China. Some scholars call this debt-trap diplomacy.¹³ Russia's diversification strategy aims to avoid this exact pattern of creditor-debtor symbiosis, although India and Brazil remain reluctant to invest because of "dependency fear."

Pakistan's relevance to Russia's Arctic BRICS is not entirely outside the circle. Islamabad sought BRICS membership, driven mainly by its search for opportunities to benefit its faltering economy. However, to be accepted, Pakistan needs approval not only from Russia, which already backed its bid, but also from India. That's where the process falls silent, given the mutual rivalry between the two countries and India's perception of the Sino-Pak alliance as a unified strategic threat. Hence, Pakistan's relevance is more structurally confined to Gwadar/Malacca than the Arctic/Suez.¹⁴

Russia diversifying partners, China's alternative routes, and in between, the aim to avoid being dependent. This asymmetric symbiosis that is connecting the three regions the Middle East, South Asia, and the Arctic – revolves around the same old strategy: who controls and who can route around the chokepoints the world trade depends upon. Pakistan's Gwadar case shows exactly what comes out of this contest. Which makes us think: will the NSR remain under Russia's sovereignty, or could it become internationalized, as China aims to do?

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