The Dawn of Eurasia presents a picture of shifting balance in world order

Bruno Macaes is an academic, the former Portuguese Minister for European Affairs, an elegant travel writer and, above all, one who reflects deeply on the churn in contemporary world affairs. Macaes’ initiative to explore the idea of “Eurasia” emerged from his sense that the dividing line between Europe and Asia, in place for some centuries, was blurring and that the two were now part of the same political and economic system, Eurasia. 

Macaes decided to test this impression with a six-month tour across the Eurasian landmass, which took him to Russia, China, Turkey and several Central Asian towns redolent of the narratives of the Great Game. The book provides an excellent first-hand account of the remarkable changes that are taking place in these territories. 

These changes, he believes, are transforming the West-dominated world order. They will perhaps replace it with a more complex, multi-polar scenario made up of significant convergences and serious competitions among the principal players of the Eurasian landmass, with no single dominant power. 

Macaes discovers that the Europe-Asia divide is of recent origin, perhaps going back just 400 or 500 years. The divide came to be consolidated only from the 18th century as revolutions in science, economic production and political society came to distinguish Europe from Asia. 

These achievements ingrained in the Western mind the sense of two distinct civilisations, one urbanised and progressive, with developed legal systems and free peoples reflecting the future, the other rural, despotic and reflecting the past. 

As Macaes travels across Eurasia, he sees the divide has blurred, primarily due to the modernisation of Asian nations — Japan, Korea and, most importantly, China — so that Eurasia now is one “integrated space”. But, witnessing China’s engagement with technology, he also notes that “returning to Europe after a visit to China feels akin to stepping back in time”. Europe now reflects the past, while Asia now has a “special claim on the future”. A new world order is taking shape right before our eyes. 

However, the three principal role-players influencing Eurasian dynamics — Russia, China and the European Union — have world-views and values that are competitive. 

Russia has had an ambivalent relationship with Europe, at times upholding “European” values and life-style, at other times projecting its Slavonic, even Asian, identity. These divergences are reflected today in competitions to shape Russia’s destiny between Westernisers, Slavophiles and Eurasians. The Eurasians, now in ascendance, see themselves as “neither European nor Asian”. 

The present leadership in Russia, ambitious for a global role, views itself as a bridge between the two continents. This vision has been given concrete shape in President Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) that brings together the principal countries in Central Asia and east Europe that were earlier part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. 

China has embarked on a comprehensive “national rejuvenation” project that will make it a “moderately prosperous society” by 2021 and a “modern country” by 2049, when it celebrates the centenary of its revolution. 

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is at the centre of its effort to “guide” the world in shaping “a more just and reasonable new world order”. The connectivity projects across Eurasia will constitute the world’s longest economic corridor. 

The Dawn of Eurasia : On the Trail of the New World Order Author: Bruno Macaes Publisher: Allen Lane/ Penguin Books, 2018 Pages: 281 Price: Rs 899

In pursuit of their shared interests in consolidating the new order and their place in it, Russia and China have decided to work closely together, building up substantial bilateral ties in energy and defence and in 2015 agreeing to meld the EEU and BRI proposals. 

Amid these dramatic developments, Macaes finds the European Union surprisingly inert and non-responsive, even in the face of the increasing spill-over into EU countries of problems at their border (Ukraine) and in West Asia (Syria). This includes the massive movement of migrants who have fled war zones and strained the economies, politics and even values of EU states. Europeans, Macaes says, “still see their task as taking their way of life to the rest of the world”. 

Macaes makes some interesting points about the role of the US in the new scenario. Though the book was written in the early days of the Trump presidency, Macaes had presciently anticipated that, amidst the changes in world order, the US could abandon Western Enlightenment values, distance itself from Europe and focus not on maintaining the supremacy of Western civilisation but of the US as the sole global superpower. In fact, Macaes even envisages the possibility of a US-China “condominium”, with the two of them sharing responsibility for maintaining global order, founded on China dominating Eurasia. 

Indian readers will be a little disappointed at the limited space given to India in the book. Macaes accepts that India will be a great power later in this century, along with Japan and Iran. He also recognises the Indian Ocean as being at the heart of global shipping and trade and energy security interests. While the ocean could be a theatre for Sino-Indian competition, Macaes, in fact, forecasts that China and India will develop “the world’s largest trading relationship” which will crucially depend on infrastructure facilities being developed across the ocean. 

As China integrates with the world economy, Macaes affirms it will ensure that “every source of disruption is minimised”. He sees India as a “decisive factor” in the naval competition between China and the US in the Indian Ocean but does not clarify what its role will be. 

The neglect of India in a major work on “Eurasia” is not surprising: India has not provided any evidence of seeking to shape the new world order and define its role in it or to project an all-encompassing strategic vision that would animate its policies in the strategic space that has effectively melded the Eurasian landmass with the Indian Ocean. 

The reviewer is a former diplomat