The Eurasian Project in Global Perspective

David Lane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367886943
• eBook ISBN: 9781351870047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Regional associations have become major players in international politics and economics. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), composed of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, is considered as a player which will strengthen the international influence and international trade of the post-socialist countries. It is intended to become a parallel association to the European Union.

This comprehensive volume considers the potential global role of the EEU. A major problem outlined is the balancing of relations between the EU and the West on the one hand, and China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on the other. The book explores the impact of the global crisis as well as a consideration of the EEU in the world system of states. It also examines the EEU's relationship with other regional developments, in relation to the EU and to the outer circle of post-socialist states that joined neither the EU nor the EEU. It concludes by considering Eurasia in the Asian context, looking at the two central Asian countries (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), relations with China and the relationship between the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the EEU.

This book was originally published as a special issue of European Politics and Society.

How the Eurasian elites envisage the role of the EEU in global perspective

Richard Sakwa

ABSTRACT

The development of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) has been accompanied by intense ideological and political debates. Initially planned as the centrepiece of Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, the project since his return to office in May 2012 became ensnared in broader global and regional contradictions. Formally launched on 1 January 2015 and now encompassing five members (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia), the EEU in institutional terms has swiftly gained an impressive degree of institutional consolidation but is vulnerable politically. It is intended not as a rival to the European Union but as a complementary association to facilitate the creation of what remain Russia’s two primary goals. These are, first, the reconstitution of elements of post-Soviet Eurasia as a political and economic community and, second, to manage the development of macro-regional blocs, including the creation of a ‘greater Europe’ from the Atlantic to the Pacific and a ‘greater Asia’ from Brussels to Beijing. The fundamental goal is to reassert Eurasia as the subject of its own history, but some fundamental issues about the EEU’s character, nature and purpose remain unresolved.

The Kremlin has been committed to Eurasian regional integration, motivated by the view that it is an economically rational and politically expedient goal. This was the view articulated by Vladimir Putin’s keynote article on the subject published in October 2011, just a few months before the presidential election of 4 March 2012 that saw him returned for a third term. Putin emphasised the success of the Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, which was completed on 1 July 2011, and the imminent creation on 1 January 2012 of the Single Economic Area with the three countries, which included standardised legislation and the free movement of capital, services and labour. Putin outlined plans for the enlargement of this project to encompass Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan (and Armenia) and its evolution into a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and eventually a Eurasian Union (EaU). Putin (2011) argued that the new impetus for integration was prompted in part by the challenge of the global economic crisis but above all reflected the needs and traditions of the region. The envisaged EaU for the first time would have supranational structures, including the creation of a much enhanced Eurasian Customs Union Commission. Putin described how it had taken 40 years to travel from the European Coal and Steel Community to the fully fledged European Union (EU), a path that he argued would be traversed far more quickly in Eurasia because it could draw on the experience of the earlier integration project. He denied that these plans represented the recreation of the Soviet Union. It would be open to new members and would be based on maximally liberalised trade regulations. The EEU was intended to be a complement to the EU rather than an alternative. The intention was not to ‘fence ourselves off from anyone’, but that it would be founded on ‘universal integrative principles as an inalienable part of greater Europe, united by mutual values of freedom, democracy and market rules’.

The dualism of the EEU

The EEU was thus to be homologous with the EU and based on similar principles of trade liberalisation and regulatory convergence. It was also to serve as one of the institutional pillars of ‘greater Europe’, the latest manifestation of Gaullist aspirations for a plural Europe united from Lisbon to Vladivostok, an idea that was taken up and amplified by Mikhail Gorbachev in his vision of the Common European Home. The project of greater Europe is both normatively and geopolitically plural, and on that basis is contested by the monist supporters of the deeper integration of the Atlantic community. On the other side, the rise of China has placed various contending greater Asia projects on the table. This only accentuated the dualism of the EEU, with two types of rationality in play. The logic of regional economic integration is now accompanied by the instrumentality of the EEU acting as the missing ‘mode of reconciliation’ on the macro-regional scale. In other words, the functionalist logic of integration is pitted against the instrumental logic of mediation. The EEU’s critics of course detect a third logic at work, namely the restoration of Russia as some sort of imperial power in the region (Clinton, 2012). Undoubtedly hegemonic impulses are in play, given Russia’s historical pre-eminence in the region and its economic and geographical predominance, but it is important to stress that these are tempered by the powerful countervailing current in defence of the sovereignty of the post-Soviet states. For Gromyko (2015, p. 1), the director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia’s goals in the post-Soviet space have been ‘to preserve as much integrity of the space as possible to provide Russia with a stable and friendly neighbourhood’.

Looking westwards, the EEU provides an institutional counterpart to the EU to allow the creation of pan-continental ‘greater Europe’ structures resting on two pillars. The EU was long resistant to engaging with the EEU as an institutional partner, but more recently it, and the German leadership, has advocated direct engagement between the EU and the EEU. This is a belated recognition that the EU-centred ‘wider European’ agenda has, as so vividly demonstrated in the Ukraine crisis and the long-stalled membership negotiations with Turkey, reached some sort of finalité, at least in terms of classic patterns of enlargement. The Ukraine crisis is the culmination of a process of political contestation on the continent (Bykov, 2014). In that context, the Putinite gambit of using Eurasian integration as a lever for pan-continental Euro-Asian unification now looks a rather forlorn project. Looking eastwards, the EEU provides all of its members with greater heft in negotiating the painful transition to greater Asian realities. The growing influence of China in Eurasian matters, ranging from investment to transport links, means that the EEU provides national elites with a stronger collective voice in shaping regional development. Although originally envisaged as a way of institutionalising greater Europe, the rift between Russia and Western Europe means that the emphasis is shifting to the EEU becoming a way of negotiating the transition to greater Asia. Dualism remains, but of a different cast.

The classic western view that Eurasian integration is little more than a project for the imperial restoration of a ‘greater Russia’ in the guise of a multilateral regional organisation is now giving way to a more sober appreciation of its value as a forum for regional engagement. Russian aspirations for a broader revival of Soviet-era relationships have encountered firm resistance from the member states, while the national elites themselves have to come to terms with the realities of multi-level governance in which sovereignty is both shared and enhanced by membership in a putative supranational association. The reality of the EEU is that of a complex set of relationships in a rapidly evolving global environment permeated by threats but also by opportunities.

The global context: towards a post-Western world?

In his State of the Union speech on 20 January 2015, Obama (2015) noted Russia’s misfortunes and America’s role in creating them:

We are demonstrating the power of American strength and diplomacy. We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small – by opposing Russian aggression, supporting Ukraine’s democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies. Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, some suggested that Mr. Putin’s aggression was a masterful display of strategy and strength. Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters. That’s how America leads – not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve.

There are rich pickings for semioticians in this text, and as for international relations specialists, every phrase is pregnant with diverse interpretations. The narrative of ‘Russian aggression’ was later formulated in terms of Russian revisionism, a view embedded at the heart of America’s National military strategy (2015). This reflected the uncertainty of the period, finding threats everywhere. Russia, Iran, North Korea and China were identified as ‘revisionist’ powers and accused of a destabilising the global order. This is the perspective of the Euro-Atlantic community, but is far from universally accepted. Far from being a coherently revisionist power, Russia in fact is neo-revisionist, challenging the practices but not the principles of international order (Sakwa, 2015a). For the Russian elite it now became almost a matter of principle to repudiate the assertions that Russia was ‘isolated’ and that its economy was in ‘tatters’. The former German Chancellor Schroeder (2015) warned that not inviting Russia to the G7 summit in Bavaria 7–8 June 2015 was a ‘misstep’ and a mistake, and noted that ‘Russia has an alternative to Europe, but not vice versa’.

What precisely is this alternative? In fact, there is not one but a plethora of integrative processes taking place across greater Eurasia, and thus the problem is not lack of choice but of balancing the various initiatives. Opening the combined BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting on 9 July 2015 in Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, with the leaders of the other EEU states in attendance, Putin (2015) noted that:

For us this [the Eurasian landmass] isn’t a chessboard, it’s not a geopolitical playing field – this is our home, and all of us together want our home to be calm and affluent, and for it not to be a place of extremism or for attempts to protect one’s interests at the expense of others.

This was an explicit rebuke to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s conceptualisation of Eurasia as the contested space for a renewed great game (Brzezinski, 1997). Putin went on to argue that the two organisations as well as the members of the EEU ‘In many ways share similar traditional values, common laws of morality, truth and justice.’ He then went on to outline what was in effect the programme of the various bodies bringing together greater Asia:

We are united in the sense that the aims that have been set can only be achieved by acting collectively, on the basis of genuine partnership, trust, equal rights, respect and acknowledgement of each other’s interests. We call for the drawing-up of coordinated responses to global challenges, for the affirmation of just foundations for contacts between states, with the UN playing a key role, based on international law, the principles of indivisibility, security and peoples freely determining their own destiny.

The combined meeting was unprecedented, bringing together a good part of humanity, including the leaders of 15 states from various continents. Although there were clear differences in emphasis, overall the meetings symbolised the emergence of a powerful new voice in global affairs.

The three organisations each had their own specific dynamics. None was explicitly counter-hegemonic but instead articulated in different ways aspects of an evolving post-western pattern of interactions. The EEU, as argued above, has a dual rationality – as a functionalist integrative project for post-Soviet Eurasia and the instrumental logic of acting as a mode of managing macro-regional continentalism. The SCO was founded in Shanghai on 15 June 2001 as a regional cooperative association bringing together China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its initial priority included joint measures to counteract terrorism and extremism, as well as to foster cooperation in education, energy, oil and gas, transport and communications. The SCO currently focuses on three areas of cooperation: regional security, economy and culture. The Ufa summit stressed the growing role of the SCO in improving cooperation in the financial sphere and providing project financing, accompanied by plans to establish an SCO development bank and a special drawing account. SCO’s development strategy until 2025 was adopted along with the Ufa Declaration. Point 6 of the Declaration asserted that the ‘peaceful coexistence of nations is impossible without universal, scrupulous and consistent application of the generally recognised principles and rules of international law’. Point 21 celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the World Trade Organization (WTO), reaffirming ‘support for working together to strengthen an open, transparent, non-discriminatory, and rules-based multilateral system as embodied in the WTO’ (Ufa Declaration, 2015). This was yet another affirmation of the emerging principle of post-western multipolarity, which by emphasising a community of free and equal sovereign states carried an implicit anti-hegemonic charge.

There were also hopes that the SCO would provide a framework for the resolution of international conflicts, including the tension between India and Pakistan. Pakistan had been the first to apply for membership in 2006, while Iran, which also had observer status, lodged its application the following year, while India followed suit in 2010. Russia argued that if Pakistan were to join, so should India, a view that in the end was accepted by China. The 2009 SCO summit in Ekaterinburg created a new category of ‘dialogue partner’, and granted that status to Sri Lanka and Belarus, with Turkey joining the group in June 2012, while Afghanistan and Pakistan had observer status. Russia became the main advocate of SCO enlargement, supporting full membership for India and Pakistan in the first instance, although Iran’s membership was conditional on the nuclear and sanctions issues being resolved. China was rather more hesitant, fearing that its influence would be diluted by the addition of another large regional power, especially one with which it had long had tense relations and with whom the border issue remains unresolved. Enlargement was also a matter of concern in Central Asia, with Uzbekistan in particular fearing being overshadowed by other regional powers.

The BRICS association was formally established in June 2006 with Brazil, Russia, India and China as founding members, with South Africa joining in December 2010. Today the BRICS encompasses 26% of the earth’s territory with 42% of global population, although in 2013 the BRICS share in global trade stood at only 16.1%. Nevertheless, with a total GDP of $32 trillion, the BRICS grouping is the single largest community of its kind in the world. At the Ufa summit the South African president stressed the benefits, noting that since his country had joined trade with BRICS countries had increased by a third from $21.5 billion in 2011. The Russian deputy foreign minister and Russian Sherpa in BRICS, Sergei Ryabkov, stressed that ‘BRICS is in fact an already established new centre of the multipolar world and a new and more democratic system of international relations.’ In a pointed rebuke to the US-led Atlanti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1. How the Eurasian elites envisage the role of the EEU in global perspective
• 2. The global crisis and its impact on the Eurasian Economic Union
• 3. The Eurasian Union and global value chains
• 4. Post-socialist regions in the world system
• 5. Eastern partnership and the Eurasian Union: bringing ‘the political’ back in the eastern region
• 6. The new Eurasia: post-Soviet space between Russia, Europe and China
• 7. Eurasian Economic Union integration in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
• 8. The Eurasian Economic Union and China’s silk road: implications for the Russian–Chinese relationship
• 9. Eurasian encounters: the Eurasian Economic Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
• Index