David Lane — Eurasian integration could offer a counterpoint to the EU and the United States, but only in close co-operation with states like India and China

Really about building an alternative to counter neoliberal globalization under US hegemony on Western terms.

The argument here is the familiar one, articulated by Margaret Thatcher during the time of Gorbachev: ‘there is no alternative to the neo-liberal model’....

Chinese developments in the past twenty years are a clear alternative to neo-liberalism....

The dynamics of the world system – particularly the rise of semi-core countries and the relative decline of the still dominant United States – leads to a longer term scenario, the developments of counterpoints, of which a Eurasian Union might become an important constituent.

But a Eurasian Union alone could not mount a very serious challenge to the hegemonic core. To build any significant alternative to the neo-liberal global order would need combination with other regions in semi-core countries – particularly the BRICS or members of the Shanghai Cooperative Organisation. Such economic alternatives could prioritise economic development, channel investment and provide employment through administrative forms of collective economic coordination. The ideology is conducive to policies requiring companies to exercise greater social responsibility – to employees, consumers, suppliers and to the environment.

A Eurasian Union could legitimate a different state system and more collectivist traditional values including those developed in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus in the past. Such developments would provide the basis for a more pluralist and multi-polar world. It would have as an economic base a capitalist alternative – a type of organised national capitalism.

London School of Economics Blog
Eurasian integration could offer a counterpoint to the EU and the United States, but only in close co-operation with states like India and China
David Lane | Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and an Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge