What is Eurasianism? And why should you care about it?
The short answer is that Eurasianism is the set of strategic questions and partial answers that have arisen since the center of global economic gravity shifted away from the Atlantic Ocean, but not toward the American-dominated Pacific. Today, economic growth is centered somewhere in the middle of the earth's greatest landmass, what Mackinder called the "World Island," Eurasia. China occupies the eastern coast of this landmass; Europe, the western one. The middle is where the questions of Eurasianism lie. OK, presumably you still don't care about it. But consider this: Since 2015, Russia has established a Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) comprising itself, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. Russia has given direct and significant military support to three of these member states (with a much less significant incursion into Kyrgyzstan). Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia were invited to join the EAEU during the planning phase, and each has attended meetings with observer status; indeed, under pressure from Russia, the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych suddenly decided to bring Ukraine into the EAEU in late 2013, before the EuroMaidan protesters said no. By the time the EAEU got off the ground, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia were already dealing with separatist Russian-speaking enclaves, which had already been supported militarily by Russia, with the exception (so far as I know) of Transnistria in Moldova. Now look at the EAEU on the map (bit.ly/36cejNI): it is a vast space with enormous mineral and agricultural resources, bridging Europe and China. Notice the big gap on its western flank: that's Ukraine. The EAEU is the logical, economically rational version of the mystical quest to revive the Russky Mir (or of Aleksandr Dugin's equally mystical White Russian geopolitics). Check out the video of Putin inaugurating a new railroad bridge to Crimea (bit.ly/366YnfH): this is the pragmatic, methodical version of what the Western press presents as a fevered medieval dream. The aim is to constitute an enlarged economic space with internal security cooperation, able to profit from Chinese high technology and markets, and willing to support China's positions vis-a-vis the Euro-American world -- not least by ensuring the flow of energy and mineral resources to the Middle Kingdom. For sure, the EAEU is not a done deal. Ukraine is the grand prize that would complete the Eurasian Economic Union. Or would have completed it, I think/hope one can say. If all you're thinking about is Russia's war on Ukraine and if you believe, like me, that it will ultimately fail at Ukraine's great cost, then you still may not care about Eurasianism. Yet Putin's rather desperate bid for Eurasia is made possible by the alliance with China, which has launched a serious and feasible strategy for Eurasian hegemony, the Belt and Road initiative. An incredible civilization-building campaign, the Belt and Road aims to link the development of China's vast West with industrial modernization programs running throughout Central Asia and into the maritime region known as "the Indo Pacific." Crucial to this plan is access to the gigantic European market; and for European countries, Chinese growth also provides the crucial market. In both cases, that's a business-to-business market, ie producer sector, and not only a market for consumer goods (which it also is). The world is tooling up for a new round of development, maybe its last one, we'll see. The issue at hand, right now, is not whether Eurasian integration will happen (it's underway), but how and according to which rule-sets. Returning to the war, China has not yet disavowed its recent rapprochement with Russia and it likely will not, for reasons of economic strategy and security vis-a-vis "the West." However China's Eurasian strategy is subtle, far-reaching and largely based on economic cooperation, with (putatively) win-win outcomes. No one can doubt that China will be the major actor of Eurasian development, and that it will be the key partner/competitor/enemy of Europe, the United States, and perhaps first of all, India, whose significance is also expected to rise dramatically as this century progresses. This friendly competition between enemies is likely to continue during war, just as right now, Russian oil and gas keep flowing to the European Union. The above realities mean that in the upcoming global crisis provoked by energy price inflation - and even more crucially, by shortages of wheat - "the West" will find itself in complex and crucial negotiations with China, and with breadbasket Russia, via China. The big question now and in the future is, who does the negotiation? The US? "The West"? The EU? According to which (or whose) principles? And who else will be included? The rules-based international order to which Prem Chandavarkar alluded has been vitiated by the historical hangover of colonialism/imperialism (just try talking with people outside Europe if you think that doesn't matter anymore). More importantly though, it has been rendered illegitimate in the present tense by the failure of larger states to abide by the rules they set, not only militarily but also economically. This makes it difficult to just patch things up and "get back to normal." As long as Europe refuses to assure its own defense and depends on the US to set the goals and organize the forces, then the European version of a rules-based order will have no enduring credibility - it will sink or swim with the (sinking) US. But if the EU does start to pay for and assure its own defense, then it will find its own power-politics under extreme scrutiny - especially if famine hits North Africa and the Middle East. It is very hard to look good, beautiful and true when everyone around you is suffering from the rules-based order you are claiming to uphold. In fact, neither the European or the American version of world order will last - because China has already shown that it will expand into Eurasia and beyond, following its own principles. It is already developing specific concepts of sovereignty, international relations, distributive justice, and - very soon - ecological justice. The Russian version of Eurasianism is brutal, regressive and unfeasible, but you can't say that about China's. To non-Western elites, it presents a pathway to modernization unburdened of huge ideological asks and bitter tastes of past betrayal. Meanwhile, the European version of Eurasianism is opportunistic at best, or simply non-existent. The American version has been wildly opportunistic (Nixon's ping-pong diplomacy) and it now shows threatening signs of turning bellicose. India has gone through a recent border skirmish with China, and that tends to throw it into Russia's arms (in the double sense of the word). We all deserve a better future than the one these considerations forebode. The liberal-humanist world state envisioned, and partially instituted, after the Second World War raised the hopes of people everywhere (even in the communist countries). More recently, though, the post-89 promise of transforming the grand rules-based ideal into substantial political-economic reality has yielded nothing other than neoliberal globalization, and that has failed to solve the distributive problem, the ecological problem, or even the war problem. What it's been really good at is creating oligarchies on the one hand, and mass alienation on the other, with accelerated ecological decay in the bargain. As a result, "the West" can no longer hold a monopoly on world order. And yet the EU can no longer disavow its own power and responsibility (Ukraine is the proof), nor should it simply give up on its own concepts of justice. As for the US - which, as Fiona Hill remarks, has become all too much like Russia in recent years - we have to solve the problem of white nationalist populism before any new contribution to world order can be made. That's no excuse to put off thinking about it though. If Russian revanchism has been handled very badly indeed by "the West," then people on both sides of the Atlantic had better develop a much better approach to the multifaceted Eurasian Question. Concerning all the above, the most informative and provocative author I have found so far is Bruno Macaes, author of The Dawn of Eurasia (2018) as well as the more technical followup, Belt and Road (2019). A former Portuguese diplomat, Macaes was in the room when Yanukovych pulled the plug on the early phases of EU accession, triggering both EuroMaidan and the first Russian invasion. He has a lot to say about Russia, although none of it very good. Basically he sees Putin's policies as an extremely bad answer to the Eurasian question - although that question, in his account, is far more real for Russia than for any other state except China itself. Reading his book, you understand why the current war was inevitable. That's not exactly a compliment. Macaes offers no concrete response to the questions of Eurasianism that he has the signal merit of posing. A multipolar global order based on divergent rule-sets is a recipe for world war. What's missing from the cookbook of power is a logic of coexistence. To claim that it already exists, that it is enshrined in "the West," is to go out on the battlefield firing blind - while in other arenas, the deeper problems of global society just get deeper. Since 1989, the European left has focused on questions of distributive justice, and the American left, on racial justice. Considerable progress has been made in both arenas. But if you think the mainstream parties with their analysts, strategists and philosophers can handle contemporary international relations, or that good old leftist anti-imperialism figured out all the answers seventy years ago, you've got another think coming. It takes the form of an economic juggernaut, a political Rubik's cube and an ecological nightmare all at once. What you're trying not to think about are the wildly multiple, and so far, uniformly ill-conceived versions of Eurasianism. Brian Holmes
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