China’s coal decision endangers Mongolian truck drivers’ lives www.news.mn

Once again, a tragedy is waiting to happen as truck drivers have to sit in their cabs for days on end in sub-zero conditions on the road to China. The coal trucks have been struck at the Tsagaan Khad Border Crossing. The reason: Chinese coal demand has already been met. According to representatives of the coal transporting companies, the truck drivers have been waiting on the road for 10-15 days without food and drink since leaving the Tavan Tolgoi mining complex. There is now a 10km long queue of trucks on the bleak Gobi road to the border.

Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe to start operating in mid-2020 www.rt.com

The Nord Stream 2 project designed to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany and other European customers will start working in the middle of next year, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said on Thursday.
He gave no other details about the exact date of the pipeline’s launch. Earlier, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters that gas deliveries via the undersea pipeline could start in the coming months.The offshore and land sections of the pipeline were connected on the German side last year. The project only needed approval from Danish authorities. Other countries on the route of the pipeline – Russia, Finland, Sweden and Germany – have long-since approved it.

Made in Mongolia – North America 2020 www.news.mn

‘Made in Mongolia – North America 2020’, a business forum and exhibition will be held in New York and Toronto in April, 2020. The event is organized by Export and International Trade Center (EITC) NGO.

Against Whom the US Wants to ‘Strengthen Cooperation’ with Mongolia? www.journal-neo.org

Mongolia’s role in international relations and the global economy is largely determined by its location right in the heart of Asia, its impressive reserves of minerals (copper, coal, molybdenum, tin, tungsten, gold), and its common border with two Eurasian giants – Russia and China. Also important is the fact that Mongolia is a natural transport link in land routes between Europe and the Asia-Pacific, which serve as alternatives to the sea route through the Suez Canal.

Therefore, it isn’t surprising that Washington has developed an increased interest in advancing cooperation with Mongolia in recent years. It should be noted that, ironically, the United States was the last major state of the Western world to establish diplomatic relations with Mongolia. The US only got around to it in 1987 and this was largely due not to the ‘diversification of the USA’s diplomatic ties’, but happened because of Washington’s intention to secure a firm footing in one of the strategically advantageous points of Eurasia. Here, China’s New Silk Road and Mongolia’s Steppe Route project converge, the latter being aimed at increasing Mongolia’s importance as a transit state at the junction of China and Russia.

Ever since the successful democratic revolution in 1990 took place in Mongolia, the United States became one of the primary ‘patrons’ of democratic reforms in the country. Political, economic, and cultural relations between the two states are expanding exponentially.

Against the backdrop of the active self-assertion of the US in the political life of Mongolia and its desire to play a key role in the country, the attempt to carry out a ‘color revolution’ in Summer 2008 following Washington’s distinctive patterns stands out. Essentially, Washington is trying to tear Mongolia away from its traditional partners, Russia and China.

But the main thing the US is particularly insistent upon is strengthening its military cooperation with Mongolia. Through this, Washington seeks not only to forge closer ties with Ulaanbaatar, but also to exert influence on the political course of Ulaanbaatar through increased leverage in the country’s military.

As USA Today reported back in October 2005, the Pentagon has far-reaching plans regarding Mongolia. Donald Rumsfeld, then-US Secretary of Defense, even said at a press conference in Ulaanbaatar: “The United States is exceptionally interested in building military bases in Mongolia, which has long been a vassal of the USSR.”

And this is not just an empty phrase uttered by the American Secretary of Defense, but an obvious strategic calculation: the US counts on its medium-range cruise missiles to be able to reach both the PRC and the Russian Federation if situated in Mongolian steppes. From this point of view, the deployment of American INF forces here is the most strategically advantageous move for Washington, as well as the fact that the population of Mongolia isn’t large, mainly nomadic and not used to defending their civil rights. Thus, they will not protest against the deployment of American missiles and perhaps they won’t even notice it. The US also presumes that Ulaanbaatar has taken an openly pro-Western course after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

However, these plans of Washington have failed to pay off so far. In recent years, the Mongolian government has repeatedly rejected the USA’s proposals to create a network of military bases on its territory.

Nevertheless, the United States continues to attach strategic importance to military cooperation with Mongolia, positioning itself as Mongolia’s ‘third neighbor’, clearly demonstrating the desire to assume a leading role in the military cooperation with the Asian state.

Mongolia, if only nominally, participated in US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2003, Mongolian military specialists have been trained in the United States and starting in 2006, major Mongolian-American field exercises titled Khaan Quest have been held, while the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of State are funding the Ulaanbaatar Regional Peacekeeping Training Center, which was created with American assistance. According to Voice of America, some 230 Mongol soldiers are still based in Afghanistan. The United States also uses Mongolian territory, which is known for its harsh climate, to conduct the military exercises of its special forces in winter conditions for their subsequent combat use ‘in a country with a harsh climate’ (said country is quite obvious, isn’t it?).

Meanwhile, a noticeable intensification of bilateral contacts has taken place recently upon Washington’s initiative. In June, John Bolton, US Presidential Adviser on National Security, visited Mongolia. Then in late July, Mongolian President Khaltmaagiin Battulga paid a visit to Washington and met with Donald Trump. Following that, the State Department issued the Declaration on the Strategic Partnership between the United States of America and Mongolia. The United States thus became Mongolia’s fifth strategic partner, along with Russia, China, Japan and India.

In this context, the official visit of the Pentagon Chief Mark Esper to Ulaanbaatar in early August attracted a lot of attention: Mongolia ended up in the list of destinations on Esper’s first overseas tour. This confirms the US’ increasing interest in making Mongolia a potential strategic bridgehead, considering its convenient location between Russia and China, the United States’ two main geopolitical opponents. According to The Diplomat, in 2019, the Pentagon emphasized the importance of Mongolia for the USA’s strategic interests in its budget for foreign operations. Washington bluntly stated its intention to make sure that ‘the United States remains a more preferable partner for the country than Russia and China.’ Citing a senior US official, the publication adds that America wishes to expand military operations and intelligence cooperation with Ulaanbaatar.

During meetings with the political leadership of Mongolia, Mark Esper expressed a desire ‘to raise the level of bilateral cooperation’ in order to entice Mongolia with the vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, which Washington intends to actively use in countering China.

As the results of Esper’s visit to Mongolia showed, Washington intends to secure this country as a significant partner in the defense sphere using a complex strategy. Firstly, the US intents to improve the current formats of interaction, including the participation of Mongolian military in the US-led Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan and the multilateral military exercises Khaan Quest. The US also wishes to ensure the country’s continued participation in global UN peacekeeping operations (about 10% of Mongolia’s armed forces participate). Secondly, the US intends to continue ‘niche’ supplies of military equipment (communications equipment and ammunition worth $2 million per year). The next step is ‘monitoring’ Mongolian military-technological cooperation with Russia and China by sending Pentagon delegations to assess the ‘weapons needs of Mongolia.’

Although these are characterized as important but not ‘breakthrough’ areas in defense cooperation, their focus is on expanding the military presence of the US, as well as the deployment of Pentagon objects, which seemed impassable before from the point of view of Mongolian legislation. The plan is to create Cooperative Security Locations (CSL) with logistical support and a certain number of US military personnel. This would allow the US to establish a presence on Mongolian territory and, if necessary, instantly deploy battle and logistics support bridgeheads of the army in any region. By advancing specifically the option of creating American CSLs, Washington is quite clearly banking on the fact that, unlike their ‘classical’ military bases, such a designation won’t lead to misreading. The term allows the US to maneuver and call them anything but ‘US military bases.’

But, despite all of these efforts on the US’ part, Russia and China will remain the Mongolia’s main allies, primarily because of the foreign policy priorities of the current Mongolian leadership.

Vladimir Odintsov, expert politologist, exclusively for the online magazine ‘New Eastern Outlook’.

Mongolia to cooperate with GGGI in green building www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. On November 20, Minister of Foreign Affairs D.Tsogtbaatar received Director-General of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) Frank Rijsberman.

Mongolia’s ‘Eternal Ice’ Is Melting, Revealing Ancient Artifacts www.vice.com

Precious artifacts have been tumbling out of melting ice patches and glaciers in Mongolia: an arrow, painted red at the tip, that may date back thousands of years to the Bronze Age; a mass animal graveyard containing the remains of dozens of bighorn sheep; remnants of a beautiful rope braided from horsehair.

These ice patches, known as Mongolia’s “eternal ice” because they normally stay intact even in summer, are melting at an accelerated rate due to climate change.

As piles of ice and snow recede, ancient objects from many periods of Mongolian history are spilling from their frozen prisons to be glimpsed for the first time by modern eyes, according to a study published on Wednesday in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

But even as this rapid ice melt opens a window into Mongolia’s past, it also threatens the future of the traditions and lifeways practiced by the people who live there today.

“Folks in essentially every corner of Mongolia that we’ve worked in don’t have the luxury of climate denial, because their day-to-day life is drastically impacted by these changes,” said lead author William Taylor, an archeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Colorado-Boulder, in a call.

“People within the last decade have seen a number of important patches that were a big focus of their livelihoods melt completely,” he noted.

While important artifacts are being recovered from some of the ice patches, Taylor emphasized that troves of archeological objects may be destroyed by the melt before people can collect them. Even if ice patches that fully melted in one season return in colder weather, for instance, the degradation of archeological materials that were preserved inside them could never be reversed.

“The vast majority of the artifacts that we recovered were actually from a patch which was in its absolute dying throes when we visited,” he explained. “So, that’s really sad and it suggests that we probably have already lost a lot of the important clues to this particular part of Mongolia.”

During research trips to Mongolia last year, reported in the new study, the team quickly realized the troubling implications of climate change for the region’s extraordinary heritage and cultural practices, such as reindeer pastoralism.

At one of the ice patches, Taylor and his colleagues discovered wooden artifacts that had melted out of the snowpack. Interviews with the Tsaatan people, who are domestic reindeer herders in northern Mongolia, suggest that one of the items was a fishing pole made of willow wood. Radiocarbon-dating of these specimens revealed that they were likely fashioned in modern times, around the 1960s and 70s.

Galvanized by the ticking clock of the ice melt, the team organized another expedition to survey ice patches and glaciers in Western Mongolia this year. The researchers relied on the knowledge of locals to guide them to sites that they suspected might be hemorrhaging artifacts during the summer melt.

A man named Bekbolat Bugibay, who runs a tour company, showed them an arrow shaft he had discovered that appeared to date from “the time of Genghis Khan,” according to Taylor.

Bugibay directed to them to the glacial site where he retrieved it, on the slopes of a 4,000-meter-high mountain. The team was able to reach the glacier, even after a storm destroyed three of their tents during the trek.

Toward the end of an exhausting day, Taylor and his colleague Nick Jarman spotted an arrow emerging from the ice at the bottom of the glacier. Upon closer examination, they realized it was made of bronze, and probably dated back to the Bronze Age some 3,000 years ago.

“When we actually spotted that glint of green of the bronze melting, poking through the ice, the first reaction was genuinely a loss of breath,” Taylor recalled.

“The next thing that settles in is the enormity of what you’re looking at,” he said. “You’re looking at something that has literally been preserved almost exactly as it entered this ice millennia ago.”

This arrowhead is the team’s “star find,” Taylor said, though its age has not yet been verified with radiocarbon dating.

The 2019 expedition also uncovered the horsehair rope, numerous animal skeletons that were likely hunted and deposited by humans, and wooden artifacts that may be spear shafts that predate the Bronze Age, though it will take radiocarbon-dating to be sure.

As thrilling as these finds have been for Taylor and his colleagues, the team is mindful of the bigger picture. The new study focuses on the Tsaatan herders who rely on ice patches as a source of water for themselves and their reindeer, as well as a place to retreat from irritating bugs and summer heat.

In interviews with Tsaatan families, the researchers learned what an enormous toll climate change has been exacting on their economic stability and cultural traditions. Despite the fact that these remote populations are essentially blameless for the climate crisis, which is primarily caused by fossil fuel emissions from wealthy nations, they are facing disproportionate disruptions as they lose a crucial source of freshwater.

“If you read a story like this and you’re not just outraged at the injustice of it, then there’s something wrong,” Taylor said. “The issue here is that we not only have folks who have done very little to contribute to the problem, but we see that climate change is undercutting the viability of their way of making a living and erasing the clues we have to their past and their cultural heritage.”

“This example should be really troubling especially because this is just one corner of Eurasia, and this kind of research has not really been done in vast swaths of the globe,” he added. “This same story may be playing out in other places and we really don’t know the scope of the problem.”

Foreign exchange reserves reaches USD 3.7 billion, eight months of imports www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. On November 20, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economy conducted the first discussion of a draft resolution on approval of the State Policy on Monetary Policy for 2020. The state policy is aimed at strengthening economic and financial system stability and supporting financial market development. In 2020, an annual inflation rate is projected at 8 percent and mid-term targeted inflation rate is set at 6 percent.

Swiss Development Strategy to be implemented until 2024 www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. On November 20, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs D.Davaasuren held a meeting with Swiss Ambassador to Mongolia Mr. Bernardino Regazzoni.

Grey List Scapegoat? Central Bank President resigns www.news.mn

G.Zandanshatar, Speaker of the Parliament has said that N.Bayartsaikhan, President of Central Bank of Mongolia and S.Davaasuren, Chairman of Financial Regulatory Commission must take responsibility for Mongolia being added to FATF’s grey list. In October, having failed to adequately comply with the requirements and recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), concerning anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing measures, Mongolia was added to the FATF’s grey list alongside Iraq, Zimbabwe and N.Korea.

MRPAM revokes another 28 mining licenses in October www.zgm.mn

A total of 28 mineral licenses were revoked in October, according to the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority of Mongolia (MRPAM), of which 12 licenses were expired and 16 were dismissed due to the license payment. This follows revocation of 39 licenses in the prior month. In 2019, the government is pursuing a strict policy on mineral licenses. Economists raise concerns over a mass anti-mining act by the Government of Mongolia, saying it may carry potential risk for the foreign investment environment. In August alone, 25 licenses, including Soumber Licenses of SouthGobi Resources Ltd. (SRG), have been withdrawn due to environmental destruction. Specifically, Soumber Licenses have been terminated pursuant to Clause 56.1.5 of Article 56 of the Minerals Law, Clauses 4.2.1 and 4.2.5 of Article 4 and Clause 28.1.1 of Article 28 of the General Administrative Law and a decision order of a working group established under an order of the Minister of Environment and Tourism of Mongolia. According to this decision order, the working group determined that SGS had violated its environmental reclamation obligations with respect to the Soumber Deposit. In 2017-2019, 254 lawsuits filed on revocation, extension, and exploration of license application, and cases regarding the termination of the mining license made more than half of them. As of October 2019, 63 companies have been selected, 58 exploration licenses were issued by the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority, and five licenses are in discussion. Also, 2020 State Budget for mineral license fees is estimated to be at MNT 36 billion.