China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the Contested Eastern Neighborhood: A Case Study of Ukraine

In this article I argue that the increasingly three-sided competition for influence – between Russia, China and the West in and over Ukraine – has created a new space for autonomous decision making and can increase Ukraine’s own agency when it comes to strategic geopolitical and geo-economic choices in its foreign policy. Relying on competition theory to determine competitive influence-seeking policies of great powers and strategies of smaller states, I propose a ‘smart leadership’ strategy for Ukraine, aimed at the management of its status in the Russia-China-West triangle. In the first part of article, I outline Ukraine’s national interests. This is followed by a consideration of the geopolitical and geo-economic environment in which Ukraine has operated until recently before I detail the changes in this environment that are related to the increased economic significance that China has assumed for Ukraine. In the second part, I consider what smart leadership would look like if Ukraine were to escape its current dual entrapment of positioning of a small state in the geopolitical competition of great powers.