(4) Mineral resources
Recent hopes have been pinned on imports from Russia to Japan of aluminum and its alloys, as well as nickel. However, the Russian aluminum metallurgy industry had been developed through the tolling system by traders, mostly non-Russian, and the export of raw materials from Russia is not carried out directly but is handled by Western trading companies. (Quite recently President Putin abolished the tolling system. The new status of the Russian metallurgy industry should therefore be carefully assessed.)
(5) Distribution system
Possible rivals to the shipping of goods through the NSR are air freight and the Trans-Siberian Railway. Hauling of trailers by road is likely to be uneconomical because of the vast distances involved and the poor state of Russia's roads. More worthy of closer study are the creation of a so-called land bridge and the use of blended transportation systems. INSROP has not yet paid sufficient attention to these options, and it is worthwhile to ask how well equipped the ports are along the NSR for handling parcel delivery to the final destination. From the point of view of environmental preservation, land, sea and air transportation should not be seen as direct competitors to each other, but rather as inter-dependent modes of transportation, all with their own characteristics and their own role to play in a well-organized and efficient transportation system. In the months and years ahead, further rationalization of shipping systems through the adoption of combined shipping systems (including the NSR) must be duly examined. One implication of the possibility of combined systems is that inevitably the NSR must be capable of handling container shipping.
In political terms, no real barriers exist to opening the NSR. Materially, however, if cargo traffic is not sufficient to sustain it, no amount of conformity to proper form or international law will ensure the health of the NSR as a viable trade route, and the NSR is doomed to languish as a strictly domestic shipping channel. The recovery of the Russian economy is therefore an important precondition, and Russia must table a scenario for economic recovery that foreign countries will find credible. In this light it should be noted that the economic data now under examination by INSROP are not necessarily accurate. If imports and exports through third countries are added, the trade flows would be much higher than official figures suggest, which may help to explain the rapid growth of Russia's middle class despite its economic troubles.
In scenarios involving shipment of goods Northern Europe and European Russia (Russia west of the Urals) to the Far East, the flow of goods cannot be expected to be sufficient to justify the standards of infrastructure the NSR will need to satisfy underwriters. It may be that a realistic scenario for NSR shipping consists not of direct shipping between Europe and the Far East but of a concatenation of shorter, local routes. If so, the development of a wide range of natural resources along the NSR of Russia, the world's greatest trove of such resources, should be the long-term guiding principle in the organization of shipping in the NSR. Only a plan for the NSR as a channel for the shipment of resources, organized in tandem with the orderly development of such resources, appears a realistic scenario for the year-round operation of shipping in the NSR.
6.3.2 Society, Politics and Legislation
One of the conditions for a viable NSR is political stability. Truly stable government involves far more than installing an executive with a president as its head. The same is true of the organization of administration, although some disagreement exists here.
