Proceedings of GREAT Day Volume 2017 Article 6 2018 The urE asian Union: Future of Integration or Failure in the Making Maria Gershuni SUNY Geneseo Follow this and additional works at: https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/proceedings-of-great-day Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Gershuni, Maria (2018) "The urE asian Union: Future of Integration or Failure in the Making," Proceedings of GREAT Day: Vol. 2017 , Article 6. Available at: https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/proceedings-of-great-day/vol2017/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the GREAT Day at KnightScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Proceedings of GREAT Day by an authorized editor of KnightScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Gershuni: The Eurasian Union The Eurasian Union: Future of Integration or Failure in the Making Maria Gershuni Sponsored by Robert Goeckel ABSTRACT e idea of the Eurasian Economic Union, or the EEU, was rst brought up by Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazerbaev in 1994. By 2015, the Russian Federation, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed the Treaty for the Establishment of the EEU, making the idea a reality. e EEU currently occupies nearly 15% of the earth’s land, and is the 12th largest economy in the world. However, very little is known about this integration project. Criticized as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pet project, and a hollow imitator of the European Union, the EEU now faces challenges of imbalance, inequity, and further integration. However, the economic bloc is poised to expand, with talks of incorporating Iran and Turkey into the Union. With the European Union weakened by this summer’s Brexit, the question remains whether the EEU will take the opportunity to expand into new spaces or whether integration projects all around the world are stalled in the anti-integration political environment. Looking at the history, politics, and possibilities for the EEU, this analysis will exam- ine the nuances of this largely unstudied organization and predict its future. tion project starting in the countries that previously NTRODUCTION I made up the Soviet space, he called it “a future be- Very little is known in the West about the Eurasian ing born today” (2011). Embedded into the project Economic Union (EEU or Eurasian Union), a single was the hope that the EEU would become one of the market between Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyr- poles of a multipolar world, a partner and a balancer gyzstan, and the Russian Federation. However, many to the European Union (EU) and the United States in Central Asia and Eastern Europe consider it to be (Putin, 2011). ough the EEU and the EU are nor- the next stage in Eurasian development and coopera- mative competitors, the idea behind the EEU and tion. e lack of knowledge regarding the Eurasian the inspiration for its institutions came from the EU. Economic Union by American writers and scholars Like the EU, the EEU evolved from a free trade area comes in part from the rapid and recent creation and in which duties and taris between nations within evolution of the Union, and in part from the dearth the area were eliminated. It then became a customs of American geographical understanding. One of the union, setting a common external tari on imports more concerning issues regarding this paper was the from other nations. At the moment, both the EU lack of geographic knowledge of the EEU member and EEU are working on eliminating all non-tari states. is is particularly concerning since the re- barriers between nations within the union, such as gions of Central Asia and Eastern Europe lay directly burdensome regulations and quotas. In his speech in the interests of rising powers such as China and announcing the intention to create the EEU, Putin the Russian Federation. e Eurasian Economic Un- even praised the EU for their integration model, and ion is an example of the growing importance of the specically praised the Schengen Agreement: accords Eurasian region as it tries to assert itself in the inter- that allowed citizens of EU nations free movement be- national political order. tween the borders of participant states (Putin, 2011). In 2011, when Russian President Vladimir Putin He explicitly stated the desire to recreate Schengen announced his plans to create a large scale integra- to some extent within the participating countries of is work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Published by KnightScholar,Maria Gershuni .2018 1 e Eurasian Union: Future of Integration or Failure in the Making. e Proceedings of GREAT Day (2017): 73-91. 74 The Proceedings of GREAT DayProceedings 2017 of GREAT Day, Vol. 2017 [2018], Art. 6 the Eurasian Union, to allow for better movement of the Eurasian Economic Union and understand the labor and capital between the nations. changes that need to be implemented for the pro- ject to work. e unique aspects of EEU normative However, in the summer of 2016, the integration framework allow it to be an attractive option for projects seemed to face an irreparable blow when, in countries wishing to engage in regional integration. an unprecedented move, the United Kingdom voted But in order for the project to be sustainable, further to leave the EU. is led many to question the vi- deepening of integration must be paced more care- ability of long term integration projects and their fully, and the member states’ leaders must be com- attractiveness to member states. Since the Eurasian mitted in projecting a unied, functional agenda for Economic Union was explicitly based on the model the future of the Eurasian Union. of the EU and often denes itself in relation to the EU, questions about the future of the EEU rose as well. Does Brexit spell bad news for the EEU, un- EVOLUTION OF THE EEU covering aws with regional integration as a whole? e idea for a concrete Eurasian Union was born Or was Brexit benecial to the development of the even before 1994, the year when the President of EEU, exposing the aws in a competitor’s model and Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazerbayev, suggested cre- making the still unaligned nations of Eastern Europe ating a trade bloc and alliance structure he called more hesitant to pursue European Union member- “e Eurasian Union” (Yesdauletova, & Yesdauletov, ship, as some writers claim (Walker, 2016)? Further- 2012). e historical roots for creating the union more, since much of the rhetoric of the “Brexit” vote stretch back to the Russian Empire, which existed was centered around a fear of migrants and refugees from 1721 to 1917. Currently, all members of the taking advantage of the free movement clause of the EEU were once a part of the Empire or its protec- EU, will fear of backlash also prevent better imple- torates, meaning they were economically subjected mentation of free movement in the Eurasian Union? to the rulings of the central government in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. Some of the infrastructure that e long term viability of the Eurasian Union, core EEU industries depend on was created dur- however, is unrelated to events going on in Britain. ing the days of the Russian Empire, such as the rail ough modeled on the European Union, vari- lines stretching across Central Asia (Cheng-Hin Lim, ous normative dimensions of the EEU are entirely 2017). ese rail lines provided the linkages among dierent from the EU and, occasionally, go against which the economies of the peripheral areas of the the core foundation of the EU. Not only is the idea Russian Empire were connected to the center and of a referendum on membership foreign to the cen- along which the modern freight industry is being or- tralized, authoritarian leaning leadership of most ganized (Cheng-Him Lin, 2017). e rising of the EEU member states, but technical implementation USSR, from the still-smoldering ashes of the Russian of EEU policies has not been suciently executed Empire, provided for the formation of the “Socialist enough to produce a backlash. Long term viability of Republics” within the USSR. ese states, includ- the EEU depends on the ability of its institutions to ing Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan uphold their responsibilities under EEU treaties and were also subordinate to the central government in the commitment of the leaders to pursue successful Moscow within the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic integration, not only in name, but in function. (Shkaratam, 2015). e economies of the socialist re- e Eurasian Economic Union “stands a good publics were integrated under a Communist system, chance of becoming an inalienable part of the new but the partnerships were unequal and exploitative, global architecture that is being created” (53), but and therefore, unattractive to attempt and recreate needs to overcome signicant hurdles stemming in a voluntary economic union (Shkaratam, 2015). from its rapid integration and focus on solidifying Almost immediately after the collapse of the USSR, cultural boundaries of “Eurasianism,” versus creating attempts were made to facilitate cooperation among longstanding norms and institutions (Podberezkin & the now-independent states. e Commonwealth Podberezkina, 2014). Using the lessons learned from of Independent States (CIS) was created in 1991 EU integration, we examine the challenges faced with the participation of ten Former-Soviet repub- is work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/proceedings-of-great-day/vol2017/iss1/6Maria Gershuni . 2 e Eurasian Union: Future of Integration or Failure in the Making. e Proceedings of GREAT Day (2017): 74-91. Gershuni: The Eurasian Unione Proceedings of GREAT Day 2017 75 lics (Yesdauletova, & Yesdauletov, 2012).