Singapore as a Stakeholder in Russia’s Far East Development: An Energy Perspective

Abstract

Amidst the fundamental shift in the global economic and political gravity towards East Asia in the past two decades, Russia has been reevaluating the importance of the vast domain of Russian Far East (RFE). Its go-east strategy is being put into practice to revitalize the underdeveloped region adjacent to the booming Asia, and China in particular. In sync with Russia’s strategic refocus on its dormant Asian territory, another slow but also fundamental change in the global meteorology has aroused intense attention, not only within Russia but also from its East Asian neighbors and major powers. The melting Arctic, as a result of global warming, will not only provide shorter shipping routes between the East and the West but also access to untapped energy and mineral resources in the region. The increasing geopolitical and economic importance of the RFE, under the new context of a booming Asia and an ice-melting Arctic, has not only made the development of Siberia and the RFE more feasible and inevitable, but also spurred other powers to rethink their stakes in the prospect of an emerging RFE.