Full text: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/11/doug-casey/trump-corridor-and-the-future-of-global-power/
.....And while the US sinks into bankruptcy, degeneracy, and corruption, Azerbaijan is providing a counter-example. At least when it comes to public works, like roads. We drove hundreds of miles, all around the country, at high speed.
The US spends $250 billion per year repairing its roads. It takes forever, and we mainly get crews standing around forever just to fix potholes. It seems like a giant grift. Matt Smith’s description is quite accurate:
“By far, the most impressive thing I saw during our visit was the level of construction occurring in the country… the scale of which is almost beyond imagination. … occasionally I could glimpse below in the valley a brand-new highway system which included dozens of tunnels. Now this is probably the most difficult terrain possible to do major construction.
“And yet what I glimpsed from above was shocking in scale. … along the roads that we traveled, there were endless streams of heavy equipment, hard at work, reshaping the landscape to expand the highway system we were on. There were cement factories everywhere built bespoke to support this ambitious effort.
“The scale was so massive, so inorganic, and so out of place, we had a hard time making sense of it. To do something like this in America would be utterly impossible. It would cost trillions of dollars. The thinking required, too big, the manpower, unavailable, the will, long gone. … seeing this scale of construction, the costs I imagined seemed utterly impossible. And so, at my earliest opportunity, I did some research. What I found was shocking.
Azerbaijan has built 4,000 kilometers of highway, 45 tunnels, including the second longest in the world, 447 bridges, 16 viaducts. Much of this over very, very difficult terrain. The project is mostly complete. And the total project time was less than five years. All this they’re doing for approximately $5 billion.
To put that in perspective, on March 26, 2024, the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was damaged when a container ship collided into it. As of today, the bridge stands unusable. No repair work has yet started. The estimated cost for reconstruction of that bridge is between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion. And when will it be done? It hasn’t even started yet. The current target completion date is October 2028.
So, in four and a half years, and for about $2 billion, we get an old and important bridge replaced in one of America’s cities. And in Azerbaijan, for $5 billion, they get 447 bridges, 4,000 kilometers of highways, dozens of tunnels including the second longest tunnel in the world. All in less than five years.”
