Putin’s Eurasian Union: a sign of Sinophobia?
The West’s natural reaction to Russian multilateralism is suspicion, and in particular a fear that whatever project Moscow has in mind is designed to counter Western influence. And Russian rhetoric often feeds that unease. In today’s IHT, Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen urge the West to get over itself. They insist that Vladimir Putin’s new ...
The West's natural reaction to Russian multilateralism is suspicion, and in particular a fear that whatever project Moscow has in mind is designed to counter Western influence. And Russian rhetoric often feeds that unease. In today's IHT, Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen urge the West to get over itself. They insist that Vladimir Putin's new Eurasian Union idea is, at root, a product of Russia's growing unease with Chinese influence in Central Asia. On their view, Moscow has become concerned that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in particular, has become a potent vehicle for Chinese economic influence:
The West’s natural reaction to Russian multilateralism is suspicion, and in particular a fear that whatever project Moscow has in mind is designed to counter Western influence. And Russian rhetoric often feeds that unease. In today’s IHT, Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen urge the West to get over itself. They insist that Vladimir Putin’s new Eurasian Union idea is, at root, a product of Russia’s growing unease with Chinese influence in Central Asia. On their view, Moscow has become concerned that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in particular, has become a potent vehicle for Chinese economic influence:
The core of Russia’s concerns is the slow but steady progress of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, originally set up in the post-Cold War period to define borders between its five members — China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan ( later joined by Uzbekistan).
But in the last 10 years the S.C.O. has evolved into the most interesting, and perhaps consequential, example of Chinese diplomacy. As a Chinese scholar put it to us the other day in Beijing, the organization went from being focused on regional security to honing in on regional development — a trajectory that accords tidily both with China’s and the Central Asians’ interests.
While nominally an equal partner to all members, Russia has felt like a junior partner in the S.C.O. Once one of the two poles in the world, Russia is now considered among the ranks of new rising powers — not a bad group to be in, but clearly a step down from its previous position in global affairs.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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