Moscow has progressively replaced geopolitics with geoeconomics as power is recognised to derive from the state’s ability to establish a privileged position in strategic markets and transportation corridors. The objective is to bridge the vast Eurasian continent to reposition Russia from the periphery of Europe and Asia to the centre of a new constellation. Moscow’s ‘Greater Europe’ ambition of the previous decades produced a failed Western-centric foreign policy culminating in excessive dependence on the West. Instead of constructing Gorbachev’s ‘Common European Home’, the ‘leaning-to-one-side’ approach deprived Russia of the market value and leverage needed to negotiate a more favourable and inclusive Europe. Eurasian integration offers Russia the opportunity to address this ‘overreliance’ on the West by using the Russia’s position as a Eurasian state to advance its influence in Europe.
Offering an account steeped in Russian economic statecraft and power politics, this book offers a rare glimpse into the dominant narratives of Russian strategic culture. It explains how the country’s outlook adjusts to the ongoing realignment towards Asia while engaging in a parallel assessment of Russia’s interactions with other significant actors. The author offers discussion both on Russian responses and adaptations to the current power transition and the ways in which the economic initiatives promoted by Moscow in its project for a ‘Greater Eurasia’ reflect the entrepreneurial foreign policy strategy of the country.
Preface by Prof. Sergei Karaganov
Introduction
1. Theorising Geoeconomic Strategy for Eurasian Integration
2. The Rise, Decline and Potential Revival of US Geoeconomic Power
3. Russian Failed Geoeconomic Strategy for a ‘Greater Europe’
4. Russian Geoeconomics in a Greater Eurasia
5. Chinese Geo-economics and the Silk Road Development Strategy
6. Russia and China: Convergence of the Eurasian Core
7. Strategic Diversity in Northeast Asia: Japan and Korea
8. Connectivity with Southern Eurasia
9. Europe at the Periphery of ‘Greater Eurasia’
Conclusion: Towards a New Russian Grand Strategy
Biography
Dr Glenn Diesen is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Western Sydney University and an affiliate at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. Dr Diesen specialises in Russia’s approach to European and Eurasian integration, and the dynamics between the two. This includes central topics such as ideology, energy and geoeconomics. He is the author of EU and NATO Relations with Russia, Routledge 2015.
"A brilliant analysis of the major shift in the Eurasian balance of power, drawing on and fundamentally developing the concept of geoeconomics. Drawing on a formidable conceptual and historical armoury, this book is an essential study of the nascent Greater Eurasia." - Prof. Richard Sakwa, University of Kent
"Glenn Diesen has given us a sophisticated and compelling analysis of Eurasian geoeconomics and geopolitics, and of Russia's central part in this region. If you want to know about this region and how it may develop, this is the book for you." - Prof. Graeme Gill, University of Sydney
"This timely and thoughtful volume addresses a major and often neglected phenomenon in the current international system - the emergence of Greater Eurasia. Glenn Diesen's analysis challenges the mainstream Western paradigm, which tends to pose the European Union in the centre of political, economic and intellectual development of Eurasia while being excessively pessimistic about any initiatives coming from non-Western powers. Despite Diesen's great optimism with regards to prospects of Greater Eurasia, his alternative view significantly enriches the debate that has by and large been confined to Eurocentrism in the recent years." - Prof. Alexander Lukin, National Research University Higher School of Economics
