Why geography matters to the world now.
A century ago geography was an avidly followed and debated subject in international relations, but the discipline for many years fell into disrepute. Long associated with fascist expansionism, after World War II it was rendered politically irrelevant by the static bipolarity of the Cold War world. However, with increased global connectivity boundaries have become more fluid and permeable, leading to a quiet but sharp growth in geography’s global importance.
In Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration, I take an in-depth look at how geography, in interaction with economic growth and the structural changes of the early post-Cold War years, has quietly begun to re-shape the world’s largest continent, thereby transforming the face of world affairs. Eurasia, after all, has over one third of the earth’s land area, over 80 percent of its proven natural gas, and almost 60 percent of its proven oil reserves. It includes three of the four most heavily populated nations on earth. Yet as Zbigniew Brzezinski, US National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter, noted in 1997: “Fortunately for America, Eurasia is too big to be politically one.”
Two decades and more after Brzezinski’s important judgment on Eurasian political geography, it remains true that Eurasia is by no means politically one. Regional rivalries, as between China and Japan, certainly continue. Yet political relations among the continent’s key nations are substantially better, economic interdependence is deeper, and social connectivity is much greater than when Brzezinski wrote. The cumulative effect of these post-Cold War social, economic, and political changes is to transform the geopolitical profile of Eurasia’s fragmented political geography itself, and to raise the specter of a more cohesive Eurasia that yields unprecedented influence in world affairs.
During Cold War days when Brzezinski wrote, three conflicting actors dominated Eurasia: the Soviet Union; China; and the European Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China Eurasian interactions have grown more flexible, complex and fluid, while transnational organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the 16+1 Dialogue between China and former Socialist nations of eastern Europe have emerged. Under Xi Jinping in China and Vladimir Putin in Russia the Eurasian giants have grown much closer, in both economic and strategic terms, while middle powers ranging from South Korea to Turkey and Kazakhstan have also furthered trans-continental interdependence.
The gradual emergence of a Eurasia “super continent” could also pose new security challenges, in both the hard-security and human security realms, and particularly to status-quo G-7 nations.
Outside the diplomatic realm, economic and technological forces in three key areas are driving the deepening interdependence of Eurasia: energy, logistics, and finance. The rising demand for energy in China and India, driven by huge populations and high speed economic growth, complements the massive oil and gas reserves of the Persian Gulf and the former Soviet Union. A logistical revolution accelerates the movements of goods and services through not only refurbished railways, roads, and telecommunications systems, but also newly computerized freight loading and routing systems, combined with electronic border-clearance procedures. And newly created and expanded financial intermediaries, many related to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, intensify prospects for connectivity across the continent.
The rapidly deepening Eurasian interdependence of the past few years undoubtedly faces obstacles. Several countries, including the Maldives, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, are confronting excessive debt. Democratic political changes, as in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, have led to intense criticism of corrupt arrangements made with previous regimes. Yet there is little question that connectivity across Eurasia is deepening, particularly between the two geopolitical poles of the continent in Europe and China, with fateful long-term global implications.
Deepening Eurasia geo-economic interdependence matters for the world more broadly for three basic reasons. First, it creates a substantial new alternative—for Europe, China, and nations in-between—to dependence on the United States. That new alternative reduces the leverage that Washington would otherwise enjoy in its dealings with the major Eurasian powers, on issues ranging from trade negotiations to defense arrangements. China’s resistance to American tariff pressures, and Turkish insistence on sensitive defense purchases from Russia, are just two examples of how intra-Eurasian ties are beginning to complicate US foreign-policy management.
The gradual emergence of a Eurasia “super continent” could also pose new security challenges, in both the hard-security and human security realms, and particularly to status-quo G-7 nations. The core nations of the “super continent”—especially Russia, China, and the Central Asians—are soft-authoritarian states with geopolitical interests that conflict with the G-7 in many areas. They also have divergent conceptions in areas such as human rights and consumer protection. And they are growing more advanced technologically, in such areas as artificial intelligence and big-data analysis, compounding security challenges in other dimensions.
The core of the emerging Eurasian super continent phenomenon is a deepening relationship between China and the central and eastern parts of Europe. Much of eastern Europe enjoyed close ties with China during Cold War days; those ties are re-emerging in a new post-Cold War geo-economic context. The collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s isolation following the Ukraine crisis, and China’s technological needs have all furthered these deepening ties, epitomized in symbiotic European relationships with Huawei, COSCO, and other state-affiliated Chinese firms that contrast sharply with US-China confrontations.
In the long run, the emergence of a more cohesive Eurasian continent may well have implications for global governance. It will likely make rules-oriented global regulatory orders like the Bretton Woods system more difficult to enforce. It will make the resurgence of unipolar US dominance more unlikely. It could make global relations based on distributive arrangements such as those embedded in China’s Belt and Road Initiative more and more the order of the day.
For the United States, the deepening prospects of a Eurasian super continent pose serious challenges, requiring a concrete and multi-faceted response. Vague threats and bombastic rhetoric—or even escalating tariffs—will not solve or even address the underlying problems that Eurasian transformation presents. A US response needs to involve engagement with likeminded allies around the periphery of Eurasia, including westernmost Europe, Japan, and Korea. It needs to involve reaffirming democratic values, whose appeal continues to complicate political management by the authoritarians. And it needs to involve building on enduring American competitive strengths in energy, food, and technology.
Tensions and rivalries across Eurasia doubtless remain. Debt problems abound, as do domestic frustrations, bubbling up from Hong Kong to Istanbul. Yet as Super Continent suggests, the wheel of history is moving. A geography once fragmented severely by political division is being quietly reshaped into something more cohesive, with fateful implications for the world of future years.
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