The pros and cons of buying Alaska.

last updated 8 January 2015

Russia

Evlalia Samedova

Should Russia buy Alaska back from the U.S.? asked Evlalia Samedova in Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein has made us an offer. In a recent column, he pointed out—half jokingly—that Alaska is a net drain on the U.S. Treasury, siphoning off far more money in pork programs than its natural resources bring in, and he proposed selling it back to us for $1 trillion. It would certainly make the nationalists happy. They would say that “reclaiming Alaska would restore historical justice.” But most Russian analysts think the huge state would be a poor investment. “First of all,” says Mikhail Delyagin of the Globalization Institute, “we don’t have $1 trillion.” And even if we could swing the purchase, says Sergei Markov of the Political Studies Institute, “Russia already has vast expanses that we can’t afford to develop—just look at Siberia.” Another few million acres of snowy tundra is the last thing this country needs.