The idea of a Eurasian Union may be a useful way to think about ways by which Russia can cooperate with some of its neighbors. But if it ends in greater political regionalization by bringing power together in separate poles, it is contrary to the requirements of a globalized international environment.
The recent developments in the post-Soviet space – EEC, Free Trade Zone and the Customs Union – brought more attention to the integration initiative sounded by the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
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interview with Robert Legvold, Marshall D. Shulman Professor Emeritus, Columbia University, and Director of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative.
Professor Legvold, the first question is on the future project of the Eurasian Union. Will this project be viable? What are its prospects?
At the moment the project it’s not viable. It will only become viable if the participants in the Customs Union demonstrate that they can make the Customs Union work, or that they can advance it to the next levels of cooperation, which are implied by the Single Economic Space, and that still leaves important and difficult tasks to accomplish in creating a genuine supranational – that is, fully integrated – economic union with its own currency. In effect, anyone that speaks of a Eurasian economic union and doesn’t use the word “economic” but says “Eurasian union,” like Prime Minister Putin, is really thinking about the European Union as such.
We shouldn’t forget that the European Union took half a century to get from the Coal and Steel Community to the Common Market, to the European Economic Community, the so-called EEC, before it became the European Union, and before it had its own currency within the Eurozone, that is, the Euro. Prime Minister Putin says that members of the Customs Union and others that would join it (he’s talked about enlarging the Customs Union or the Single Economic Space to include Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) can do it more rapidly, because they can learn from the experiences of failure as well as of success from the Europeans. But it’s difficult to imagine that they can do it, even if they are successful with the Customs Unions, even if they are successful with the Common Economic Space, in the foreseeable future.
However, the idea itself represents, in an important way, calculations on the part of the Russian leadership of what they need to promote in order to assist them in locating Russia in an evolving international system. Notice that Prime Minister Putin speaks about a Eurasian union as a new pole in an international environment that he recognizes is increasingly dominated by the Asia-Pacific region with China at its center and Europe with the European Union at its center. And while Russia is not an integral part of either of those, it’s clear that Russians think they need some kind of, as he put it, “pole” to strengthen their position vis-à-vis Asia-Pacific and the European Union. But he doesn’t see this, at least he argues that this is not seen as a kind of competitor for Asia-Pacific or for the European Union, at least not as an alliance against either Asia-Pacific or Europe. Rather he refers to it as a “link” that would give Russia, in combination with Kazakhstan and Belarus and whatever other countries would join it, greater leverage when they deal with the Asia-Pacific or with Europe.
Thus, the significance of the idea is not its immediate feasibility, which I don’t believe is real, but instead as an indication of what the requirements or the needs of Russian foreign policy are today, as understood by Prime Minister Putin and those around him
And what are the possibilities for Ukraine to join any integration project created by Russia: the Customs Union, the Eurasian Economic Community or the Eurasian Union?
Ukraine is going to want to maintain as much independence as possible, allowing it to develop relations with the European Union (there will again be Ukrainian leaders in the future who will push integration with the European Union, even though that’s not the case with the Yanukovich government today), while at the same time preserving good economic and trade relations with Russia in all spheres, including energy.
Therefore, what is to be expected on Ukraine’s part is an effort to promote free trade arrangements, which is something that the Russian government supports – free trade arrangements between the organizations in the post-Soviet space and the European Union. They’ll try to be cooperative in both directions, but they will continue to tilt toward the European Union, notwithstanding the current political difficulties.
And the last question is about international relations. Can this project be taken as a new wave of Soviet restoration? Can it worsen international relations and start a period of confrontation?
The simple answer to that question is, “No.” Putin, in the Izvestia article, explicitly denies that this idea is intended to recreate the Soviet Union, which he sees, as he has said in the past, as unrealistic and infeasible, and even undesirable.
But the idea has two potential effects that are partially negative: one, I think it will be read by some in the outside world, including some governments both in the West and among Russia’s neighbors, as an attempt to reconstitute the Soviet Union, or as an indication of a continuing Russian nostalgia for the lost empire. I think that’s incorrect, but subjectively it may well have that effect on others.
A more realistically objective potential negative effect is more abstract: the notion that one wants to create new poles in international politics, that one wants to create new aggregations of power, like a Eurasian union, in order to balance other such aggregations of power like the European Union or whatever is happening in the Asia-Pacific, is not terribly useful for international politics. It reinforces the regionalization of international politics, which is happening in the economic sphere, but this adds a political dimension. Political regionalization leads to fragmentation, when we need instead to be thinking of how we promote integration in what is increasingly a globalized international environment.
I do not believe that it is the intention of the Russian leadership to try to rebuild the Soviet Union. But I do think there is the risk that a number of players on the outside may see it as such. The idea of a Eurasian Union may be a useful way to think about ways by which Russia can cooperate with some of its neighbors. But if it ends in, or is intended to end in, greater political regionalization by bringing power together in separate poles, it is contrary to the requirements of a globalized international environment. This environment requires that countries like my own, the United States, key countries in Europe, Russia, China, and India think about ways by which to integrate this globalized world.
