With the collapse of the USSR, a number of hotbeds of tension appeared on its territory. One of them is the Caspian Sea. As you know, earlier it was almost entirely located within the borders of the Soviet Union, and only its southern part belonged to Iran. Since 1991, five states - Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan-have become the" owners " of the Caspian Sea. The mutually exclusive interests of these five countries, several subjects of the Russian Federation (Astrakhan Region, Dagestan, Kalmykia) and the leading world powers - the United States, China, as well as Great Britain, Turkey, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan-collided. What are these interests? Why is it difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to coordinate them? How to build interstate relations in the future? To answer these and other questions, you should analyze the current situation. For several centuries - until the Suez Canal was commissioned 130 years ago - Russia was the main crossroads connecting Europe and Asia. Its roads and rivers were the shortest routes from the Baltic Sea and the White Sea to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea region. Water transport arteries were placed under special state control due to their special importance. Back in 1798, Emperor Paul I signed a decree in which he ordered: At the same time, the State Order of Internal Waterways of Russia was established, which was transformed into a department at the beginning of the XIX century. The Suez and Panama Canals have fundamentally changed the geography of international trade, which is favorable for us, and they have reoriented the routes of transit trade routes. Time has decreed that Russia's access to the world's oceans in the south and west today largely depends on transit waterways located in neighboring countries. It is no secret that measures to restrict traffic on international arteries are being taken not only for environmental, but also for strategic purposes - in order, for example, to ... Читать далее