6 ms·

This may create a window of opportunity for Russia, because Russia communicates with China and NK via land routes, while Western allies are separated by ocean.

saagarjha 3y ago
Opportunity to do what?
- oneshtein 3y ago
  To disrupt supply routes and perform whatever they have in their mind. Russia switched to war-time mode, so they think that they can win the war with NATO. Massive disruption in trade routes may shift balance of powers in democratic countries, which Russians may want to exploit. Russians are strong at informational front, they are strong liars and shadow players.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    Whatever, but moving a significant part of all the freight from China to Europe through Russia would probably require quite an improvement on the current railway infrastructure. It's probably a multi track system going all the way through China, Russia (with maybe Kazakhstan or Mongolia in between if they care about shortcuts), Belarus and finally to Poland. Then maybe upgrades to the European railways too to handle the excess traffic coming from the wrong direction (EU harbors are not in the East.) It's not something they can do in a short time and it takes a lot of political collaboration. I think that it's easier for them to win the war, if they can win it, and start buying Western Europe politicians again. Or just start buying them again while the war goes on.
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      Russians will not supply EU in case of war with NATO. :-/
- juanani 3y ago
  [dead]
AdamN 3y ago
Rail/Road doesn't compare to ships in terms of throughput by weight so the land route to China from Russia, even if the freight train system were robust, would not handle the same amounts that a trans-oceanic route like China to the Americas could handle (or even China to St. Petersburg if that were needed)
- bombcar 3y ago
  The simple railroad idea is “big ship comes to west Panama, unloads onto trains, which load into big ship in east Panama” but that avoids the strength of railroads. You have to unload the ship eventually anyway, so you instead have it load into rail and disperse to final destination more directly. You’d need a heat map of where everything ends up that is going through Panama, but if you’re dumping to rail many of those ships would unload elsewhere. Or in other words, Europe will be hit much harder by this than the USA will.
  - brianbreslin 3y ago
    Panama has a tiny railroad that follows the canal, if they thought this was a viable alternative they would expand it. I think they realize the labor cost on both ends would make this prohibitive + the time to unload and load up another ship would cause major bottlenecks.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The problem for Panama is that the cost of rail transport is dominated by the time for loading and unloading; once you've gotten to the point that loading/unloading on trains makes sense, suddenly many more countries in that area are competitive; if I recall correctly Mexico is building a rail line across their narrowest part.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
An 'average' panamax container ship carries 4,200 lorries/train carriages of goods. The infrastructure to move 100K of those a day 1000s of miles on land would be enourmous and make global trade prohibitively expensive - far cheaper to sail for longer around the capes.
- oneshtein 3y ago
  Yep, but those two routes around capes can be disrupted too, which may cause advantage for those, who are not using them. Then it will be easy to plant the message into brains of those 50% who have less than average IQ: "Blame your government for this sudden spike in prices! Vote for those, who want to protect us, not foreigners!"
  - rtpg 3y ago
    aside because everyone who makes that comment seems to get it wrong: 50% of the population has less than the median IQ, not the average!
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      We cannot rank all the people and put their IQ into a sorted array to calculate median, so some of us accept loss of precision when we use average numbers.
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      > because everyone who makes that comment seems to get it wrong: 50% of the population has less than the median IQ, not the average! What's the mistake? It's a normal distribution; the average is equal to the median.
      - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
        The median itself is a type of an average, too, regardless of the distribution. We have many averages to choose from
raverbashing 3y ago
And no port that is constantly free from ice
- bombcar 3y ago
  Yet.

saagarjha 3y ago

Opportunity to do what?

oneshtein 3y ago
To disrupt supply routes and perform whatever they have in their mind. Russia switched to war-time mode, so they think that they can win the war with NATO. Massive disruption in trade routes may shift balance of powers in democratic countries, which Russians may want to exploit. Russians are strong at informational front, they are strong liars and shadow players.
- pmontra 3y ago
  Whatever, but moving a significant part of all the freight from China to Europe through Russia would probably require quite an improvement on the current railway infrastructure. It's probably a multi track system going all the way through China, Russia (with maybe Kazakhstan or Mongolia in between if they care about shortcuts), Belarus and finally to Poland. Then maybe upgrades to the European railways too to handle the excess traffic coming from the wrong direction (EU harbors are not in the East.) It's not something they can do in a short time and it takes a lot of political collaboration. I think that it's easier for them to win the war, if they can win it, and start buying Western Europe politicians again. Or just start buying them again while the war goes on.
  - oneshtein 3y ago
    Russians will not supply EU in case of war with NATO. :-/
juanani 3y ago
[dead]

AdamN 3y ago

Rail/Road doesn't compare to ships in terms of throughput by weight so the land route to China from Russia, even if the freight train system were robust, would not handle the same amounts that a trans-oceanic route like China to the Americas could handle (or even China to St. Petersburg if that were needed)

bombcar 3y ago
The simple railroad idea is “big ship comes to west Panama, unloads onto trains, which load into big ship in east Panama” but that avoids the strength of railroads. You have to unload the ship eventually anyway, so you instead have it load into rail and disperse to final destination more directly. You’d need a heat map of where everything ends up that is going through Panama, but if you’re dumping to rail many of those ships would unload elsewhere. Or in other words, Europe will be hit much harder by this than the USA will.
- brianbreslin 3y ago
  Panama has a tiny railroad that follows the canal, if they thought this was a viable alternative they would expand it. I think they realize the labor cost on both ends would make this prohibitive + the time to unload and load up another ship would cause major bottlenecks.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The problem for Panama is that the cost of rail transport is dominated by the time for loading and unloading; once you've gotten to the point that loading/unloading on trains makes sense, suddenly many more countries in that area are competitive; if I recall correctly Mexico is building a rail line across their narrowest part.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

An 'average' panamax container ship carries 4,200 lorries/train carriages of goods. The infrastructure to move 100K of those a day 1000s of miles on land would be enourmous and make global trade prohibitively expensive - far cheaper to sail for longer around the capes.

oneshtein 3y ago
Yep, but those two routes around capes can be disrupted too, which may cause advantage for those, who are not using them. Then it will be easy to plant the message into brains of those 50% who have less than average IQ: "Blame your government for this sudden spike in prices! Vote for those, who want to protect us, not foreigners!"
- rtpg 3y ago
  aside because everyone who makes that comment seems to get it wrong: 50% of the population has less than the median IQ, not the average!
  - oneshtein 3y ago
    We cannot rank all the people and put their IQ into a sorted array to calculate median, so some of us accept loss of precision when we use average numbers.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > because everyone who makes that comment seems to get it wrong: 50% of the population has less than the median IQ, not the average! What's the mistake? It's a normal distribution; the average is equal to the median.
    - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
      The median itself is a type of an average, too, regardless of the distribution. We have many averages to choose from

raverbashing 3y ago

And no port that is constantly free from ice

bombcar 3y ago
Yet.