In today’s interconnected world and the new global order, trade corridors are essential highways of the global economy and strategic tools for geopolitical and geo-strategic influence. Global trade is being conducted in a turbo-charged manner. The threats of blockades of shipping routes such as the Suez Canal, Strait of Hormuz, or the Malacca Strait, keep buyers and sellers on edge.

In such a situation, countries want to have alternatives. Shipping is the better mode of cost-effective transportation of goods, but the volatile and unpredictable ramifications of conflicts between nations disrupt trade. China took the pioneering initiative by establishing the Belt and Road Initiative in which China Pakistan Economic Corridor is the bedrock component.

Cargo through corridors is increasingly being done through multimodal transportation network connecting rail, road, and maritime routes. However, conflicts and tensions among neighboring countries within the route of such corridors impede the success and critical mass of such corridors.

Global trade has often been hostage to the arbitrary, pernicious, and harmful imposition of economic sanctions on countries or regions that do not comply with the diktat of economic and military behemoths. More often than not, the economic sanctions are routed through the United Nations, which is subservient to countries that provide substantial financial resources to the world body.

Russia analyzed the situation and initiated its own corridor in association with selected countries. The International North-South Transport........

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