The linchpin of Eurasia

Kazakhstan and the Eurasian economic union between Russia’s defensive regionalism and China’s new Silk Roads

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9339482
AutoresMoritz Pieper (0000-0001-5908-3021, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume58
Fascículo3
Páginas462-482
Data de publicação2020-05-11
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1384-5748 • E-ISSN: 1740-3898
EditoraPalgrave Macmillan (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1057/s41311-020-00244-6
OpenAlexW3025606330
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas33

This paper analyses the extent to which Kazakhstan’s agency in its interaction with China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative is shaped not only by Russia and China’s outward projection, but also de-centring practices at the regional and sub-national level. The Kazakhstani government has embraced China’s Silk Road economic belt (SREB—the land-based ‘belt’ of the BRI) and has aligned its ‘Nurly Zhol’ domestic stimulus programme with the SREB. At the same time, Kazakhstan’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Union increases Russian leverage over Kazakhstani trade and tariff policies. The advent of the BRI thus exacerbates, but has not caused, a partially competing logic behind Russia’s defensive regionalism and Kazakhstan’s professed multi-vector foreign policy. Contrasting the latter with Russian and Chinese geopolitical constraints imposed on the sociopolitical fabric of Kazakhstan, the paper examines how Kazakhstan is a microcosm for the dynamics of a new Eurasian order in the making

China · Democracy · Economic Diplomacy · Economic union · Economics · Economy · Foreign policy · Geopolitics · International trade · Political science · Politics · Regionalism (politics · China's Global Influence and Migration · International Development and Aid · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law