The Landlocked Navy of Mongolia

Many landlocked countries with no access to the open ocean maintain navies, which might seem odd at first. But once you realize that aside from oceans, lakes and rivers too form national borders for many countries, the idea will not seem so absurd. For example, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan—three landlocked countries, all maintain their own naval fleet on the enormous lake, Caspian Sea, which they border. Paraguay has armed patrol boats on the country's major rivers because any hostile nation can reach the heart of Paraguay by travelling upstream via these rivers from the open sea through Argentina. Switzerland—historically neutral, yet one of the most armed nation in the world—also has armed patrol boats keeping watch across its many lakes. Hungary maintains a full armada of vessels including warships and minesweepers. All these nations have legitimate reasons for defending their inland waterways. But Mongolia is another story. Mongolia is surrounded on all sides by land. Photo of the Mongolian map by Jason Kolenda/Shutterstock.com Mongolia is the most landlocked country in the world with its borders more than 600 km away from the nearest coastline. In terms of size, it is the world's second-largest landlocked country behind Kazakhstan. Mongolia's only international water border is a 10-km-long zigzag across the northeastern end of Uvs Lake, a tiny portion of which crosses into Russian territory. Realistically speaking, the chances of Russia invading Mongolia through this narrow corridor is extremely low. Nevertheless, if Mongolia wants to defend its water boundary, so be it. But that’s not the reason why Mongolia has a Navy. As a matter of fact, Mongolia’s Navy isn’t even on Uvs Lake. It’s on another water body—Lake Khövsgöl—that’s entirely inland. The Russian border is more than 13 km away from the lake’s shores and separated by a lofty mountain range.