Counteract Containment with the Greater Eurasian Community

From an international political perspective, the world order has been knocked badly off balance since the bipolar era of superpowers came to a close. Beginning with the Gulf War, the U.S. has gone full steam ahead with its strategy to build a global empire, and the planet has been strong-armed into a level of conflict unseen since the World War II.

Unfolding a map of the world shows at a glance that the U.S. is now utilizing its unmatched strength to lead an alliance of maritime nations to close in on Eurasia from both east and west, as well as leveraging its power in the Middle East to complete the three-pronged envelopment of the Eurasian continent. With this larger picture in view, Eurasia sits within a C-shaped encirclement engineered by the U.S., with Europe and Japan acting as overseers for their respective regions. On a smaller scale as well, China, Russia and Iran all individually lie within their own regional C-shaped areas of containment. The U.S. bemoans the Cold War mentality of others at every turn, while it is precisely the U.S. itself that has failed to abandon its Cold War machinations, and moreover has continued to put those plans into practice; it is just that the U.S. Cold War stratagem has primarily been executed by means of clandestine and somewhat cryptic cultural and economic operations.

It can be predicted that if the U.S. remains unchecked in advancing its plans for a global empire, the very structure of international politics will move from the current state of imbalance to becoming entirely broken. Have not both the crisis in Ukraine that precipitated the current standoff in Europe and the inflammatory acts of Japan and other nations in the South China Sea that are destabilizing Asia and the Pacific, come about solely at the behest of the U.S.?

Following the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, many around the world commented upon the increasingly close relationship between China and Russia. There is much truth to this. However, the move is not preparation for a confrontation with the U.S., but rather an attempt to mitigate the already gravely imbalanced state of international politics; it is a collaboration done for the sake of regional and world peace. The U.S. gained the upper hand during the Cold War due to disunity within the Eastern camp. Now, China and Russia are standing securely back to back. Both states need only direct their attention inward, nurturing their economies and disposing of worrisome subversive elements.

As evinced by the gargantuan natural gas deal struck between them, economics remains the basis and continuing focal point of their cooperation, and there exist suitable conditions for establishing links in terms of energy, markets and technology. Due to its geographical proximity and a long history of trade with China and Russia, Iran can also become a strategic partner within this economic arrangement, which can later be expanded to include India, Pakistan, the Korean Peninsula and Central Asia, thus establishing a greater Eurasian community. This greater Eurasian community would be regional in nature and designed for self-defense, not constituting a threat to others, but having the capability to respond to threats. It would have regional peacekeeping forces for mediating internal conflicts and performing combined assaults upon rampant terrorists in the area.

Simply put, as the primary powers in Eurasia, China and Russia have a responsibility to pick up the pieces of a fragmented Europe, first realizing peace on their shared continent, then radiating this peace outward to other areas of the world. In this way, the world will reach a general equilibrium between the united systems of land-based and sea-based civilizations.

Once the greater Eurasian community is formed, the three major powers currently surrounded by the U.S. will form a triangle that simultaneously faces the Pacific, Indian and Arctic Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. The U.S. and its two large systems of alliances in Europe and Asia cannot be interjoined, which has halted the world’s shift toward confrontation. The U.S. has always dreamed of instigating a conflict that would spell the collective doom of all regional powers in Central and East Asia, but a Eurasian alliance would see those plans for a war to end all wars come to naught. The existence of a greater Eurasian community would force historically aggressive nations like Japan to get along with China and other states in the region. At the same time, the high level of integration between regional forces would provide the continent with a powerful means to suppress terrorism, becoming the most reliable guarantor of world peace.

The author is director of the Maritime Institute for Security and Cooperation.