Strategic Culture and Russia’s “Pivot to the East”: Russia, China and “Greater Eurasia”

Abstract

Russia’s strategic culture has been primarily shaped by its troubled relationship with Europe and the West, but relations with Asia have also had a profound impact on Russian strategic thought. Historically, attempts to reorient Russian policy toward Asia have often sought to compensate for worsening relations with the West, but have frequently ended in failure. President Putin’s current “Pivot to the East” has had important successes, but has failed to resolve a long-term strategic challenge for Russia: how to manage its relations with China without becoming a junior, dependent partner. In response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which threaten to dominate the Eurasian continent, Russia has proposed a “Greater Eurasian Partnership,” which promotes a Russian-led vision of Eurasian integration, in cooperation with a rising China. The “Greater Eurasia” idea has little economic or institutional backing, and exists largely at a rhetorical level. Moreover, it reproduces many of the historical challenges of Russia’s Asia policy: it is still largely informed by Russia’s problematic relations with the West, promoting Greater Eurasia as an emerging anti-Western bloc. It highlights important differences with China’s vision for a new Eurasian order. Critics of the “Greater Eurasia” project argue that Russia should avoid dependence on China by maintaining an “equidistant” position between East and West, a strategic turn dubbed “geopolitical loneliness.”