Community, its Origins and its Limits: A Eurasian Perspective

Abstract

The novel coronavirus triggered but not forced the end of globalisation in Eurasian space. During the last thirty years, the main task of almost all Eurasian politicians was “to make the world a better place,” in order that “the world should be saved.” Excessive level of globalisation used to achieve the goal of “saving” the world in the last decades led to a queer situation. A new member of the known coronavirus family reveals that the affluent European society, equipped with all kinds of social facilities, can only defend itself against the “intruder” with means that would otherwise be taken only in "times of need." The "reconstruction programmes" to which Eurasian governments have now committed their citizens in order to compensate for civil lockdowns and economic shutdowns will hardly have any effect at all in overcoming a longer-term economic depression. The corona crisis suddenly highlighted what globalisation and digitalisation have accumulated in the form of long-term and exponentially increasing risks and problems by overcoming practically every kind of natural border in Eurasian space. The only remaining solution is to give more space to diversity instead of unity and to fight for a well-defined co-existence instead of a general coexistence in Eurasia.