Ukraine, Eurasia, And The War For The Future of Europe

An excerpt from, “The Rise of Eurasia and the Ukraine War” By Irina Busygina, cirsd, Summer 2022:

Indeed, it has become impossible over the recent decades to deny Eurasia’s incredible achievements. Look at global cities, for example. This phenomenon, born in the Western world and originally used by sociologist Saskia Sassen to describe London and New York, has moved to Eurasia. Global cities in Eurasia have grown almost like mushrooms to now include Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and others. Another critically important challenge for the accelerated development of huge Eurasian landmasses was connectivity. Here, a critical role is played by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that is acknowledged as the most ambitious infrastructure undertaking of our time. Covering almost 70 countries by land and sea, it should profoundly affect every dimension of Eurasia, from shipping and agriculture, digital economy and tourism, to politics and culture. Finally, another proof of the rise of Eurasia—at least for those who profess realism in international relations—was the nearly simultaneous rise of the two major, albeit authoritarian, Eurasian powers: China and Russia. With the Russian and Chinese rise, realists celebrated “the return of the state” in geopolitics and international relations and, consequently, the decline of global governance, institutions that underpin it, and multilateral formats in general.

An excerpt from, “Putin’s ‘Eurasian’ fixation reveals ambitions beyond Ukraine” By Andrew A. Michta, Atlantic Council, May 4, 2023:

With the stroke of a pen, Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 31 approved Russia’s latest foreign policy concept, its first since 2016. While Putin called the document “a basis for our practical actions in the mid-term and more distant future,” the release did not make much news beyond dedicated Russia watchers. This is in part because its cavalcade of fabrications and grievances about the world has been marched out by Putin in speeches for years. Yet this official distillation of Kremlin-approved ideas is worth reflecting on, especially for how it describes Russia itself. Doing so reveals a concerning inflection point in Russian imperial ambitions beyond Ukraine: Putin intends for Russia to contend against the West not just in terms of military power, but also in the realm of ideology.

The nine-thousand-word concept starts by describing Russia as “a unique country-civilization and a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power.” It adds that Russia “brings together the Russian people and other peoples belonging to the cultural and civilizational community of the Russian world.” In the Kremlin’s formulation, then, Russia is not so much a nation-state among nation-states as it is a civilizational world unto itself. This kind of language has been used by Putin for years and is increasingly prevalent among Russia’s elite. It is used to explain the reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union and chart a course for Russia’s redemption. This redemption is the creation of a new russkiy mir—here translated as “world” but also meaning “peace.” It is a concoction designed to become Russia’s new civilization, its “Pax Russica” of sorts. Whether the new wave of Russian nationalism-cum-imperialism succeeds in defining the Russian mind will determine what the Russian Federation becomes going forward.

This shift in Russian culture may be seen as the “de-Westernization” and reconceptualization of Russia as a Eurasian state par excellence, with “Eurasia” understood in modern Russian history as an entity separate from the West—and not only separate from the West, but in a dichotomy of the West vs. Eurasia as well. It is about moving Russians’ point of reference for their country back to Russia’s pre-European era, before German administrators, Dutch ship builders, and French artists some three hundred years ago became fixtures at the Russian imperial court. This Westernizing impulse in Russia over several centuries helped the country to modernize and build a powerful military machine that would defeat the Poles, the Swedes, and, ultimately, the French and the Germans. But it was also this empire-building process that made it all but impossible for Russia to move past superficial “Westernization” and become truly Western. And so today, just like the “Europeanization” of the Russian empire was to be its rebirth in the nineteenth century, the “Eurasianization” of the Russian Federation is offered as a fundamental break with the past.

An excerpt from, “The Illusion of Conventional War: Europe Is Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Conflict In Ukraine” By Sandor Fabian, Modern War Institute, April 23, 2024:

European countries sit at a historical turning point, one that potentially affects their long-term national survival. The existential-level shock that many suggest is a necessary condition for groundbreaking changes has been delivered to them by the Russian attack on Ukraine. All of them responded with more and faster investment in their national defense. Unfortunately, too many have been pursuing misguided responses to this shock and continue investing in poorly suited and even meaningless capabilities based on the continued illusions about the conduct of conventional war. Observations from the war in Ukraine point toward a need for a complete paradigm shift. A theory of war that works for one country and in one time may prove to be wholly inapplicable to other countries in a different time. When that happens, leaders must be prepared to modify or even abandon that theory of war. European countries should completely redesign their national defense approaches based on the realities of the twenty-first-century battlefield. Failing to do so may force them to pay the ultimate price in the event of Russian aggression.

An excerpt from, “Partitioned Ukraine” By Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan, Eurasia Group, January 8, 2024:

The outlook for European assistance is only slightly better. German budgetary challenges on one side, growing Hungarian opposition on the other, and a lack of leadership from most everyone else will make it hard for the Europeans to fill the gap in military aid the Americans will leave over the medium term. While Europe is ramping up production capacity, it doesn’t have the infrastructure to provide the high volume of ammunition (including all-important artillery shells), heavy tanks, howitzers, and infantry fighting vehicles that Ukraine needs.

The material balance has also shifted in Russia’s favor. On manpower, Russia is attracting significant numbers of men to new contracts, so a politically fraught second mobilization this year is unnecessary for now. President Vladimir Putin has also successfully converted his economy into a war operation. Roughly one-third of government spending and 6% of GDP will be devoted to the war in 2024, and Russian domestic production of missiles and artillery shells is now greater than before the war. North Korea is providing a large volume of additional ammunition, and Iran continues to provide (and now produce in Russia) drones (please see Top Risk #5).

Ukraine is in a more troubled position. On manpower, it must mobilize and train new recruits to improve force quality. Kyiv is considering mobilizing 500,000 additional troops, which is probably impossible but shows the quandary Ukraine is in as it confronts the army of a much larger country. Kyiv also needs to scale up its domestic defense production, especially of drones for the battlefield and to hit targets inside Russia.

. . .Tapering US political and material support will deepen a rift in the transatlantic alliance, which is the cornerstone of the international system. Europeans view current and likely future cuts in US assistance to Ukraine as an Afghanistan 2.0 policy lurch, but with much higher stakes for European security. Their concern is magnified by the risk that Trump will try to take the US out of NATO if he wins in November. Russia’s upper hand will make the Kremlin feel like it successfully stared down the West on an existential issue, emboldening Putin to lean on unsupportive countries in the EU and NATO (such as Hungary and Slovakia) and driving further division.

An excerpt from, “EU Ukraine Strategy should include the Eurasian Spine” By Bernard Siman, Egmont Institute, April 4, 2023:

The European Union needs to raise its head above the parapet to scan the geopolitical horizon to be able to deal more effectively with a number of key threats. This is particularly important because as Russia’s illegal war of aggression rages on, Moscow has been seeking to broaden its options geographically and strategically. In particular, Europe needs to engage along the Eurasian Spine: the line stretching from the Alps to the Himalayas and beyond. The multiple conflicts festering here will affect European security, peace, and prosperity for a long time to come. Moreover, it is in the EU’s enlightened self-interest to seize the opportunities for partnership presented by the Global South, enhancing in the process its own stability and security. Some of these areas in the Global South are also a source of direct threats and instability that can be exploited by Russia to aid its aggressive strategy. The EU, in a nutshell, needs to “Zoom Out” to rediscover the art it seems to have lost of playing the game of global geopolitics on multiple front simultaneously, backed up by hard power, in an era in which geopolitical changes will not only be persistent, but likely permanent as well.

An excerpt from, “Is this Putin’s utopia?” By Joshua Kucera, Coda Story, January 29, 2018:

Yet even those hopes for the Eurasian Union’s role faded, as Putin saw new threats coming from the West. By 2013, he had returned to the presidency, and the EU was preparing to sign “association agreements” with Armenia and Ukraine. The Kremlin concluded that Russia needed to be “the center of gravity in the post-Soviet space,” enabling it “to talk on an equal footing” with the EU and the wider West. — Alexander Gabuev, Moscow Carnegie Center

Moscow responded by announcing a major arms deal with Armenia’s enemy, Azerbaijan, and floated rumors that it might increase the cost of gas supplies to the country. Yerevan got the hint: it abandoned the EU and said it would join the Eurasian Union instead.

Putin also began to put more emphasis on the concept of a Eurasian identity and civilization. In a landmark speech in 2013 — only two weeks after Armenia had turned its back on Western Europe — he said the EEU was not just about mutually beneficial agreements, but “a project for maintaining the identity of nations in the historical Eurasian space.” But his efforts to woo Ukraine into the Eurasian fold ended in disaster.

When Ukraine’s President, Viktor Yanukovych, announced that he, too, would turn his back on the EU in favor of the EEU, the Maidan protests erupted. That led to his ouster in 2014 and a new anti-Kremlin government taking over. Putin responded by annexing Crimea and backing the war in Eastern Ukraine, destroying relations with the West but also any hopes of luring Ukraine into the Eurasian Union.

For Eurasianists, the geographic boundaries of “Eurasia” are pretty hazy. But one thing they are sure of is that Ukraine is an integral part of it. So as they see it, a Eurasian Union without Ukraine is no Eurasian Union at all.

“We lost someone along the way,” quipped the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, when the EEU was formally launched in May 2014. “I mean the Ukraine that started this hard work together with us.” Putin was visibly annoyed. And Gabuev says he has heard some senior Kremlin officials say privately that launching the EEU at that point was “premature.”