The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity is more than a road

A year ago this month, President Trump launched the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity , TRIPP for short, in partnership with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

This route is much more than a simple road; it represents an active American intent to safeguard access to the heart of Eurasia, helping partner countries maintain their independence and preventing Russia, China and Iran from dominating the strategically vital Caspian region.

The U.S. and Western allies need to promote infrastructure that blunts the impact of disruptions to freedom of the seas and spurs the development of energy resources outside the Middle East. TRIPP is an important component of this policy.

As the U.S. and Israel exchanged missile and rocket fire with Iran and Russia’s war on Ukraine intensified over the past year, TRIPP provided a narrow safe route above the Caucasus for global aviation between Europe and Asia. Recognizing that such a route provides a strategic buffer against Iranian antagonism, the Trump administration is now working to strengthen the corridor’s security as well as the American presence along it; American companies will operate TRIPP for 99 years in a public-private partnership.

The TRIPP corridor links Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey in a physical manifestation of the peace agreements signed last August at the White House, ending a 30-year conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. TRIPP is in turn a component of a larger land trade route linking Europe and Asia, known as the Middle Corridor.

This corridor is of growing importance for global trade, providing the opportunity to circumvent one of today’s most vexing geopolitical challenges: attacks on freedom of the seas. Three major maritime choke points — the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea Straits and the Black Sea — control global energy flows, giving malign actors like Iran massive strategic leverage. TRIPP mitigates that problem and, since it does not pass through Russia or Iran, current and future sanctions will not affect it.

But the benefits of the corridor go beyond facilitating trade between Europe and Asia. The region is home to oil and gas reserves that can help diversify global hydrocarbon markets, lowering prices, strengthening security of supply, and reducing reliance on traditional producers and the vicissitudes of their politics. In addition, Central Asia is the source of nearly half of the world’s uranium production, and possesses large deposits of rare earths that are otherwise mainly found in China. Western access to these resources depends on the Middle Corridor.

For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. and Europe promoted geographic diversification of energy sources as key to energy security. Over the last decade and a half, however, the Biden administration and European Commission stopped promoting energy diversification out of the mistaken belief that a transition to renewables was imminent. The current Strait of Hormuz crisis exemplifies their error; if new sources of energy had been developed, such as in the Caspian and Africa, the conflict would have had much less impact.

Still, for all its practical importance, the main value of TRIPP is strategic. Indeed, since TRIPP is located very close to Armenia’s border with Iran, it is not the ideal spot to locate major energy infrastructure like electricity and gas pipelines, nor strategic infrastructure such as fiberoptic cables. These will likely be established further north from TRIPP, while still connecting Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey.

Instead, TRIPP should be conceived as a signpost of America’s return to actively engaging with a region where it has been largely absent in recent years.

And while America is pursuing TRIPP in its own interest, Western partners including the EU, the U.K., Japan and South Korea would benefit from joining, expanding, and strengthening it. The route and the wider Middle Corridor directly serve their security interests by ensuring that Russia, China and Iran do not assert control over the heart of the Eurasian continent, a reality that America must impress upon our allies.

As Iran’s near-panicked reaction to the announcement of the initiative suggests, America’s adversaries also see TRIPP as much more than a trade route. A major change is underway as America is once again actively contributing to the security and economic development of a key but often underestimated region. Hopefully more Western states will increase their presence and influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

The West’s adversaries have shown that they will readily leverage every geostrategic advantage against us regardless of the collateral damage. We must, in turn, proactively remove that leverage by building routes and relationships that are not dependent on maritime navigation, while still fighting for security at sea and fostering development of diverse energy sources beyond the Middle East.

Brenda Shaffer, Ph.D., is a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. Svante Cornell, Ph.D., is a co-founder and director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy and a Senior Fellow for Eurasia at the American Foreign Policy Council.