How about a highway linking New York and London?

The subject was the construction of a New York-London highway, a breathtaking idea with great vision that also comes with significant geopolitical challenges. Indeed, if one looks at a map, the highway’s construction would require a tunnel under or bridge over the Bering Strait to connect the U.S. state of Alaska with the Russian peninsula of Chukotka.

Those who are ready to dismiss this project as a pipe dream, at best, or Vladimir Putin’s sinister effort to undermine American and British democracies, at worst, should take note that this was a bipartisan group that believes this highway “offers a credible proposition for helping calm turbulent international waters, as it would potentially benefit every nation on earth.”

As organizers stated correctly, despite the current problems between the U.S. and Russia, “the two countries have demonstrated the ability to work together in the International Space Station.”

In historical terms, not so long ago, they were allies in the war with Nazi Germany. Given that June 6 marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, a celebration of its success should be combined with gratitude for the contribution of the Red Army on the Eastern front. Unfortunately, the Western allies didn’t choose the high road for peace by inviting Russia for celebrations. Instead, they choose to escalate this conflict by throwing more money and dangerous weapons to inch the world close to the abyss.

Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, and one of his campaign’s slogans was “Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.” Considering that Japan and Germany, once bitter enemies, are today Western allies and Vietnam is now a trading partner with the U.S., perhaps those who advocate this project are visionaries rather than naïve dreamers.

This tunnel idea is not new, and many unsuccessful attempts to build it have been made, going back to 1890, when William Gilpin, the first governor of the Colorado Territory, envisaged a vast “Cosmopolitan Railway” linking the entire world.  One can find other such attempts on the internet.

Closer to our time, in 2007, Russia revived a 150-year-old idea that once had the support of leading Republicans of Lincoln’s 19th-century America to unite rail lines in America and Eurasia through the Bering Strait crossing as a 65-mile tunnel.

With China’s Polar Silk Road having extended the traditionally east-west development corridor into the Arctic, and as China and Russia have increasingly merged the Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian Economic Union, this new development dynamic offers incredible economic opportunities for all Arctic nations.

In 2014, Chinese transport experts proposed building a roughly 6,000-mile high-speed rail line from northeast China to the United States. The project would include a tunnel under the Bering Strait and connect to the contiguous United States via Wales, Alaska, along the river to Fairbanks, Alaska, and along the Alaska Highway to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

In 2015, another possible collaboration between China and Russia was reported, part of the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development, a transportation corridor across Siberia that would include a road bridge with gas and oil pipelines between the easternmost point of Siberia and the westernmost point of Alaska. It would link London and New York by rail and superhighway via Russia if it were to go ahead.

Interestingly, when the conversation turns to the budget for building this tunnel, it is estimated at $99 billion, which is a lot but less than what already has been spent on the war in Ukraine, which could have been easily avoided by agreeing to keep this country neutral.

Many other U.S.-Russia cooperation proposals and concrete projects have been repeatedly presented to the U.S. government, only to be ignored or rejected outright. The war machine is robust and not easy to overcome. Still, what happened on May 21 this year showed that those who advocate peace and win-win cooperation between the nations are not giving up.

Edward Lozansky is President of American University in Moscow.