{"id":11631,"date":"2022-12-15T15:42:30","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T13:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=11631"},"modified":"2022-12-15T15:42:31","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T13:42:31","slug":"the-geopolitical-dimensions-caused-by-social-unrest-in-mongolia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=11631","title":{"rendered":"The Geopolitical Dimensions caused by Social unrest in Mongolia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Winters in Mongolia are particularly cold. But that didn’t stop thousands of protesters from gathering in the country’s capital Ulaanbaatar to protest against corruption and soaring inflation to heights of more than 15%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The corruption charges relate to allegations about the country’s coal industry and the fact that certain politicians are accused of having stakes in mines and transport companies that were able to make illegal sales to China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mongolia is a country that has traditionally relied heavily on mining. About a quarter of the country’s GDP comes from mining. China is the destination of about 86% of Mongolia’s exports, and coal accounts for about half of them. The protesters claimed that around 6.5 million tonnes of coal had been effectively stolen and demanded that the names of the politicians involved be released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mongolian government’s response was to release nine controversial state mining company contracts targeted by protesters and to declare that all future coal export deals would be transparent, while pledging that a parliamentary committee would investigate the scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A geopolitically critical country<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, when such forms of unrest occur in a country with Mongolia’s geographical location and mineral wealth, it is reasonable to want to consider the geopolitical dimensions as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, Mongolia is a country that always lives in relation to its two powerful neighbors: Russia and China, with whom it has the largest trade. It receives the largest imports from Russia and directs most of its exports to China. The country has very large reserves of coal (a fossil fuel that in the short term China will continue to use extensively), gold, copper and also large deposits of brine with lithium, a mineral particularly important since it is used in the battery industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the country has a crucial geographical position in the major trade flows and actions between China and Russia. In fact, the country is expected to be part of the route of the planned Power of Siberia 2 pipeline which, when built, will be able to send up to 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia’s Yamal Peninsula to the Arctic Circle in eastern China, a pipeline expected to to begin construction in 2024 and which is a critical aspect of Russia’s effort to redirect its natural gas exports to the east, given the European decision to effectively completely disengage from Russian natural gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, China and Mongolia have upgraded their cooperation mainly in terms of transport, mainly minerals, including railways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upgrading of Sino-Mongolian relations was also reflected in the recent visit of Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnagin Khurelsukh where he also met Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The Mongolian Prime Minister underlined the good relations between the two countries, expressed his support for the Chinese strategy and emphasized the importance of building the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The attitude of the West<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This does not mean, of course, that the West has abandoned this critical area. On the contrary, it is clear that the strategic goal is precisely to “detach” Mongolia from the influence of its two neighbors. It is no coincidence that on December 1-2 a NATO delegation visited Mongolia and met with representatives of the country’s armed forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mongolia has been in cooperation with NATO since 2005 and has also participated in peacekeeping missions.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The great conflict for influence in greater Central Asia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Central Asia is increasingly becoming a field of competition between the West on the one hand and China and Russia on the other. This makes sense, if we consider that in this region it will be decided to a large extent whether the overall plans for Eurasian integration will go forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most typical example so far is Kazakhstan, a country of particular strategic importance, which is trying to maintain balance between relations with Russia and China and the effort to attract investment from the West, and where in aspects of the recent violent protests, many also saw elements of foreign incitement .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, in the confrontations between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan \u2013 the two countries still have not fully clarified their border line \u2013 some have also detected an attempt at foreign meddling to the extent that the conflict itself calls into question Russia’s ability to guarantee security of the wider area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, a corresponding attempt to exploit local conflicts in the wider Russian “zone of responsibility” has also been recorded in the confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a conflict that is a real test of Russia’s ability to guarantee stability in the wider Caucasus region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winters in Mongolia are particularly cold. But that didn’t stop thousands of protesters from gathering in the country’s capital Ulaanbaatar to protest against corruption…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[836,3],"tags":[161,1490,3963,124,58,215,70,184],"class_list":["post-11631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-geopolitical","category-geopolitical","tag-china","tag-geopolitics","tag-mongolia","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11636,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11631\/revisions\/11636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}