Eurasian Regionalisms and Russian Foreign Policy

Abstract

The paper looks at regional integration projects in the postcommunist Eurasia, defined as the former Soviet space plus China, from the point of view of Russia’s foreign policy design and implementation. The foreign policy is the main vehicle to project the country’s perceptions of itself internationally. When foreign policy acquires a regionalist dimension, it signifies important changes to the country’s international orientations, but also reveals something important about the country itself. Russia’s critics perceive its efforts at creation of the Common Economic Space and the Customs Union with Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine as neo-hegemonic and perhaps, neoimperialist in nature. I disagree with this assessment. I address Eurasian regionalist projects as a subset of the new regionalism (NR) developments that had emerged in response to neoliberal globalization and represent an adaptive reaction to it. The foreign policy emphasis in a study of evolving regionalisms endeavors to refocus the attention on regionalizing agency and its role in shaping regional institutions and structures. Such a refocusing allows building a bridge from a study of new regionalism to a study of domestic determinants of foreign policy.