Tuesday 3 June 2014

A brief primer on Vladimir Putin's Eurasian dream

A brief primer on Vladimir Putin's Eurasian dreamEurasia 2
The good news is that it has more than trebled trade flows between its three current members. The bad news is that it may lead to a severe shortage of lacy bras in Russia and its neighbours – and possibly to a new cold war.

That's a rather flippant introduction to a weighty subject. Vladimir Putin's dream of a Eurasian Union, a vast trade and political bloc stretching from China to the edge of the EU, began taking shape in 2010 with the ECU, a free-trade customs union binding Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

A carelessly worded ECU regulation on the absorbency of non-natural materials has sparked colourful protests from wearers of lace underwear in the Khazakh city of Almaty. Experts warn that unless the law is changed by July 1, 90% of lingerie stocks in the union may have to be destroyed.

But Putin's plan is for the ECU to grow into a "powerful, supra-national union" of sovereign states like the European Union, uniting economies, legal systems, customs services and military capabilities to form a bridge between Europe and Asia and rival the EU, the US and China by 2015.

While he has described the end of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century", Putin denies he is seeking to resurrect it. The west is not so sure; former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has described the Eurasian Union as "a move to re-Sovietise the region", adding ominously: "We know what the goal is."

Underwear protest Almaty Kazakhstan
Women protest against a possible ban of lacy underwear in Almaty, Kazakhstan. A Photograph: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Vladimir Tretyakov
Whatever Putin's ultimate aspirations, a Eurasian trade bloc would wield considerable clout. The existing three-country ECU represents a market of some 165 million people, and a combined GDP of around $2.3tn. Kyrgyzstan will join by next year, as (after what most observers assume was heavy Kremlin arm-twisting) will Armenia.

Others in the region, though, seem less convinced. Azerbaijan and Moldova, tempted by the EU, have cold feet; likewise Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Georgia had a war with Russia as recently as 2008 and is even more wary, while Ukraine – convulsed by protest since its president pulled out of an EU trade pact late last year – is far from certain to sign up to any Moscow-led union.

Many analysts are doubtful that any amount of pressure from the Kremlin will persuade some of these states to join. Others have questioned the wisdom – and cost in financial sweeteners – of Russia entering into an economic and political partnership with a cash-strapped dictatorship like Belarus. Nor is it sure that Russians themselves would welcome all – including, presumably, an influx of migrant workers – that full, EU-style union would entail.

"The Eurasian project is a mirage of a post-Soviet archipelago, in which authoritarian leaders use each other to preserve their power," Lilia Shevtsova, author of Putin's Russia, wrote recently. Economist Anders Aslund went further, describing Putin's grand plan as "a neo-imperialist hole" into which Russia was digging itself "ever deeper".

Synthetic bra bans are, by this reading, just the beginning.

No comments:

Post a Comment