Geopolitical Aspects of the Initiatives and Projects Forming Greater Eurasian Partnership

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyze the Great Eurasian Partnership project as a logical continuation of the Great Eurasia project, together with the idea of a Greater Europe that has been proposed for more than a decade. The gradual abandonment of the geopolitical concept of «Greater Europe», in the context of which Europe was seen as the geopolitical bridgehead of the United States on the Eurasian continent. The expansion of Europe to the east was associated, in this case, not with the desire to raise the Eurasian distances to its own level, but as a means of consolidating the US's geopolitical success in Eurasia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As an alternative, we should consider the project of a common economic space “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”, jointly developed by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB). Particular attention during the joint implementation of the “Greater Eurasian Partnership” and “One Belt, One Way” projects highlights the need to address two key problems associated with global risks, in particular, environmental and geopolitical ones.