China favours the southern route, naturally, but Nemekhbayar says they don’t have the means to block the eastern route. ‘Russia already is in Mongolia,’ he said. ‘The Chinese are not in Mongolia.’
So, caught between China and Russia, Mongolia has also sought to create a military bulwark by increasing its military ties with the United States and other western countries. In the 1990s, it tried to take part in UN peacekeeping missions, but the United Nations deemed Mongolia’s armed forces unsuitable for deployment, Mashbat says. The United States, however, eager to recruit as many countries as possible for its ‘coalition of the willing’ against Iraq, accepted Mongolia’s forces despite their faults, he says. A contingent of about 150 Mongolian soldiers carried out perimeter security operations at Camp Echo in southern Iraq—the country’s first combat action since World War II—until Mongolia ended the deployment in 2008. (It has since sent a contingent of troops to Afghanistan.)
Mongolia’s participation earned it some financial reward from the United States, including a $285 million aid package through the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the establishment of annual joint peacekeeping exercises, called Khaan Quest.
‘This [peacekeeping exercise] is one of the gains we got from Iraq,’ Mashbat says. US military cooperation with Mongolia also includes an initiative unique to Mongolia in which a small group of US Marines ‘embeds’ with Mongolian forces full time to help train them in western military methods. In addition, Mongolia has achieved its goal of taking part in UN peacekeeping operations, with a contingent of about 250 soldiers in Sierra Leone since 2006.
Russia, concerned about US influence anywhere on its periphery, has pushed back against Washington’s moves. It has started its own series of military exercises, under the Darkhan rubric, and has pledged $7 million in military aid (though while Russia and Mongolia officially say the exercises are devoted to peacekeeping, Mongolian defence officials privately say they are more modest, focusing on how to fix aging Russian equipment that the Mongolian military uses).
Moscow also has attempted to stymie US influence over Mongolia’s railroads. The United States had agreed to give $285 million to renovate Mongolia’s existing railroad (a project unrelated to the coal mine railway), but one of the conditions for the aid was an external audit of Ulaanbaatar Railway, a condition the Russian side blocked, forcing the Mongolian government to come up with replacement projects on which to use the funding.
So far, Mongolia’s delicate balancing act has worked. Mongolia can look optimistically westwards toward Kazakhstan, a country whose doctrine of a ‘multi-vectored’ foreign policy is similar to Mongolia’s ‘third neighbour’ concept and which has used natural resource wealth to dramatically improve its economy since independence.
Mongolia has so far resisted the political example of its neighbours, and is rated as ‘Free’ in Freedom House’s annual index. And while incomes are still low, they are growing—and as more mining projects come online, they are bound to grow more.
But even as incomes grow, so will pressures from outside. It’s still unclear whether Mongolia’s independent democracy will be able to stay that way.
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John Chan
If Mongolia wants to attract international investments, they have to make their investment environment friendly to the international investments, i.e. allow higher profits for the international investments to make. Insisting on an odd railway gauge definitely is not an international investment friendly requirement. Russian does not have the money or the technology to help Mongolia out of poverty to prosperity.
The best way Mongolian can do to improve their future is to ask China to help them to get rid of that odd railway gauge in their nation all together, globalization is the way to go for the Mongolians.
David Mike
It is disturbing how so many people have a twisted view of history. For instance, some Chinese people are claiming Chinggis khan and Kublai khan were Chinese emperors? Chinggis khan never sat on the Chinese throne nor did he live in walled cities, he lived in his traditional ger until his time of death. Kublai khan was an emperor of China, but he drew on his Mongolian heritage to avoid suspicion from the other khans for being “un-Mongolian” like. Does who claim Ming dynasty overthrew Mongol rule is wrong, the Mongols destroyed themselves through internal strife and years of assimilation into the societies they conquered. The Song dynasty was never strong enough to fight the Mongols, they had no-counter attacks as some claimed. They were terrified to even cross the yellow rive as they had no experience at fighting the nomads unlike their norhtern rival Jin dynasty. The Song was conquered through naval warfare, as soon as the Mongols defeated the Song on the sea and landed, the Song government surrendered. Manchurains were also not Chinese, they were nomads like the Mongolians who after conquering China , became assimilated to the Chinese culture. Mongolia will find more markets through the “third neighbor” policy and ascend the shackles of the corrupt Chinese market.