There is a great deal of insight in the analysis Europe's Shattered Dream of Order: How Putin Is Disrupting the
Atlantic Alliance in the May/June 2015 issue of Foreign Affairs by Ivan Krastev, Chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, and Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and Mark Leonard, Co-Founder and Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
However, I may enter a caveat on the suggested EU strategy to embrace the Eurasian Economic Union to drive a wedge between Russia and China.
Russia and China now need each other more than before. Russia's sole dependence on energy exports finds a ready and massive customer, unfettered by Western sanctions. Russian energy offers China alternative transit routes against choke points in the unstable Persian Gulf or the Malacca Strait controlled by the US 7th Fleet. (Similar calculations apply to China's leading role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Central Asia.)
Above all, both are feeling that the West, especially the United States, is adopting a covert policy of military and economic containment against both of these perceived increasingly-assertive powers, if not discreet political and ideological subversion. So these common geopolitical calculations are bringing the two countries closer together.
However, Russia and China are not forming themselves into a bloc. Blocs don't often work in an increasingly inter-dependent and interconnected world. Nor are they forming a rigid alliance.
Indeed, there remains quiet suspicions and rivalry on both sides. The scars of history also run deep in China as much of Russia's Siberian East was seized from the Middle Kingdom during the tail end of her dynastic reigns. Now with more and more Chinese settlements in the Russia Far East, the danger for Russia exists that at some future point, a Crimea-style civil referendum may happen spontaneously near China's Siberian border.
Listen to my latest radio panel discussion on BBC Newshour and The World Tonight on 24 April.
As Mark Leonard rightly points out in his FT article, global influence is now more likely to be achieved through geo-economics, rather than the military.
I should add another important dimension for the 21st Century. That is global connectivity.
Apart from the internet, infrastructural links are vital, especially high-speed rail, ports, and trade links. This explains China's epic strategy of One Belt, One Road., which is designed to connect China with Asia, the Indian Ocean, East Africa, the Mediterranean, West Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.
Interestingly, China is also interested in expanding her links with the Eurasian Economic Union, an area rich in resources and a growing middle-class. I alluded to this my recent PowerPoint presentation at the Forum Istanbul, Turkey on 28 April.
In light of the above, I don't see how the EU's best option is to attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and China.
A more effective EU strategy would seem to capitalize on both the Eurasian Economic Union and China's One Belt, One Road strategy by integrating the vast EU market with these initiatives. That way, Russia and China would be drawn more to EU's strengths, in terms of quality standards, regulatory institutions, values, and other norms.
As alluded by Mark Leonard before, the EU's greatest hope to lead the 21st century is through these soft powers, rather than through any Mearsheimerian "Offensive Realism".
I submit that "containment" by the West, particularly on China, is a result of more aggressive posturing by Beijing outside its Borders and its role as the new colonialist power in Africa etc. Otherwise why bother ?
Posted by: chris fraser | May 10, 2015 at 05:12 PM