Mongolia’s prime minister, Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene, recently expressed his country’s fear that the world is heading towards a new cold war as the relations between Russia and China and the west – particularly Nato – have taken a turn for the worse. “It’s like a divorce,” he said. “When the parents divorce, the children are the ones who get hurt the most.”
The country sits landlocked between Russia and China and is fearful of antagonising either. It gets much of its power from Russia, and China buys much of its exports – mainly agricultural goods and minerals such as copper. By pursuing a nimble foreign and trade policy since it transitioned to a multiparty democracy in the early 1990s, Mongolia has established a stable economy, receiving a thumbs up from the World Bank in its latest country report:
