Eurasia 2040

Can we imagine the geopol­itics of Eurasia in 2040 to be radically different from today’s? How could it be otherwise? Change will be rapid, the result of dynamics already visible but fur­ther accelerated and deformed by radical changes in different parts of Eurasia. Change will also be highly interactive; new, permanent, and transactional realignments will occur among Eurasia’s actors, who will each frame new objectives and strategies for achieving these same objectives. Unpredictable outcomes will flow from unprecedented risk‑taking that can no longer be con­strained.

The distinct outlines of all of this geopolitical movement are already evident, though far from predict­able or even forecastable. Russia is failing. Europe is breaking. America is withdrawing. China is stretching assertively. India is rising. Japan is arming. Iran is pre‑revolutionary (again). Turkey is in therapy. The Middle East is, well, the Middle East.

From all this churning, a Eurasia that is likely to be startlingly different will emerge by 2040.

From all this churning, a Eur­asia that is likely to be startlingly different will emerge by 2040.

Russia

A number of powerful geopolitical forces will drive this change. Of these, Russia’s decline will prove to be the most conse­quential. What was once specula­tion of a few prescient strategists is now solid analysis built into the strategic planning of virtually all of Eurasia’s important states, and in­deed many states beyond Eurasia. The evidence is now so overpow­ering that it cannot be wished away or denied. The question is not how long the Russia we know will last, but rather what a Russia suffering from multiple pathologies will look like in various stages of failure and collapse, how deftly it will seek to prevent its own demise, and how other actors will factor into their own strategies the consequences of Russia’s undisguised decline.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, a Russian state remained among the many new states of the former empire. That state was incon­gruous, at best. It stretched across more territory than its authorities could control. It contained large blocks of non‑Russians, whose de­mographic growth often outpaced that of ethnic Russians by orders of magnitude, while these peoples entertained visions of indepen­dence from Russia that were barely suppressible under the thin blanket of Moscow’s remit. Rural Russia was disappearing from neglect, depopu­lation, and envi­ronmental break­downs. Its economy could not overcome dependence on dwin­dling hydrocarbon revenues, while its military could not develop or adapt next generation technologies and capabilities without those reve­nues. Its best and brightest human capital fled in droves to more at­tractive and imaginable futures in the West and elsewhere.

Russia cannot now align itself out of these dilemmas. It has no strong history of sustainable alignments with any of Eurasia’s other powerful actors. To the con­trary, its legacy of creating resent­ments from temporary partners it has sought for advantage, or more open hostility from states on its periphery that have experienced Russia’s imperial designs, is lasting. The economic and political institu­tions Russia created or supported to harness its former borderlands— for example, the Collective Treaty Security Organization or the Eurasian Economic Union—have done little to advance Russia’s brand or secure its geopolitical foothold. Russia has fought a relentless battle to immunize itself against Chinese influence by un­dermining orga­nizations like the Shanghai Coopera­tion Organization, composed of most of the region’s key players, often at the expense of Russia’s longer‑term interests. Looking back from 2040, one will see that from Europe to China, and from the Arctic to India, Russia had no permanent friends.

Experts tell us the Soviet Union collapsed for many reasons, in­cluding the country’s lousy economy, over‑extended political control, and the population’s re­jection of KGB excesses. All true, but these pathologies had existed for decades prior to 1991, and Russia’s Soviet empire had still held together. Only when the borderland peoples called it quits did the USSR come apart, much to the astonish­ment of political scientists, intelli­gence analysts, and think tank re­gional specialists who had insisted ad nauseum that so many “stake­holders” in Soviet rule precluded such an outcome.

History is repeating itself. The Soviet Union is gone, but the turmoil along Russia’s periphery extending some 11 time zones is in­tensifying and accelerating. Russia is again coming apart at its edges, but with another twist. In the 1980s, ethnic issues and regional is­sues often conflated. Today’s Russia still has divisive ethnic issues, but its regional challenges in places dominated by ethnic Russians may matter as much or more. The com­bination of ethnic and regional resistance to Russian rule makes a post‑Russia world both imaginable and increasingly probable.

The recent massive demonstra­tions against Moscow’s rule in Khabarovsk on Russia’s Pacific rim may be 5500 kilometers away from the capital, but this highlights three important features of the unrest. First, Moscow’s authority stops well short of its claim to embrace these far‑flung territories. Second, the protests are fueled largely by ethnic Russians, not non‑Russians, whose identity is associated more closely with their region than their ethnic roots. Their call to re‑establish the Far Eastern Republic, a nominally independent region established in that part of the country after Russia’s civil war in 1920‑1922, un­derlines both this regional identity and its distance from Moscow’s version of what Russia is, which is punctuated by flying a regional flag. And third, expect to hear echoes among Russia’s Slavic Siberians, who have a long history on the fringes of, but distinct from, main­stream Russian culture; the history of their separatist instincts is, in­deed, just about as long. The infec­tion potential is powerful, with mil­lions of Russians following events in Khabarovsk on the internet.

Further west, tensions in Buryatia on Russia’s border with Mongolia have risen dramatically because of Russian slights of Buryats’ distinct culture and politics. “How long will Buryatia remain a colonial republic fed with crumbs from the Czar’s table?” a resident asked recently on Facebook.

Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, Muslim nations associated eth­nically and religiously with the new states of Central Asia and sit­uated close to now‑independent Kazakhstan, are resurrecting heroes from independence movements that flourished before Lenin’s Bol­sheviks could extinguish them. They are doubling down on their respective claims of sovereignty within the Russian Federation in the face of Moscow’s efforts to walk back power sharing arrangements with both that were agreed in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Tatarstan asked for UN recogni­tion of its independence in 2008, and this desire has intensified, not abated. These are also among the Russian Federation’s most econom­ically important regions, whose loss would be grievously felt.

The North Caucasus run­ning along an important part of Russia’s southern boundary has been steadily, often violently, dis­tancing itself from Moscow’s rule for several decades. Chechnya is ruled by a nominally Moscow‑af­filiated strongman, but this is little more than a fig leaf for allowing Chechens to exercise unfettered authority over their own affairs in exchange for not drawing Russia back into another devastating war. The neighboring Ingush are intensifying their opposition to Moscow’s efforts to control their politics, rights, and concerns, and some have called for independent statehood. Circassians, who seek to prevent their territory being amal­gamated with Russian territories, have removed a memorial to con­quering tsarist forces in Sochi, which both copies and provokes ef­forts of others along the periphery to rid themselves of Russia’s impe­rial imprint. “North Caucasians, Siberians, and others view Moscovite conquerors as Africans and Asians do their colonizers,” trumpeted the editors of a leading Russian newspaper recently.

Even Kaliningrad, a small exclave between Lithuania and Poland that has been part of Russia since only World War II but has no land at­tachment to it, is the object of forces seeking to reattach it to Germany or achieve outright independence from both countries.

The former Soviet border­lands, now mostly indepen­dent states, have put more distance between themselves and Russia, despite Russia’s efforts to stop the consequences of a fractured Soviet Union through interventions, in­timidations, and coercion. Georgia is gone from Russia’s sphere of in­fluence, and basing Russian troops in territories it captured from Georgia in 2008 will not reverse this dynamic; rather, it has inten­sified it. Ukraine, too, has lost a substantial part of its territory to vengeful Russia, but it appears to be increasingly more distant from any reconciliation that gives Russia hegemonic influence over Ukraine’s Western‑looking population.

At this writing, Belarusians are threatening to evict their Soviet‑era leader —a move Russia may yet attempt to prevent, but without any hope of convincing that state’s citi­zens that unification with Russia is desirable. And Central Asia’s new states have watched Russia’s influence decline in the face of China’s more re­lentless economic diplomacy.

Armenians tossed out their tradi­tionally Russia‑first governments in 2018, while Azerbaijan has aligned itself heavily with Russia‑wary Turkey. Russia’s seemingly adroit move to offer its troops to separate Armenian and Azerbaijani combat­ants following the latter’s striking victory in the Second Karabakh War is seen by some as a successful Russian gambit to reinsert its in­fluence along Russia’s vulnerable southern frontier, but on closer ex­amination it has a scent more of desperation than strategic opportunity. If Russia cannot control the South Caucasus, its security perimeter is the volatile North Caucasus, a vision Moscow cannot welcome: reason enough to seek stability in the region.

But Russian troops in Karabakh will not enhance the Kremlin’s inability to deter Armenia’s slow slide out of Russia’s orbit or Azerbaijan’s realignment with Turkey—let alone reverse Georgia’s strong commitment to a transatlantic future. To the con­trary, they will accelerate these dynamics because Russia cannot provide a solution to Karabakh’s densely insoluble geopolitical co­nundrum. While it is popular to assume that Russia’s new role has improved its strategic position, this is far from clear, especially now that Turkey is a key player in the dispute. Russia’s options are now more limited and its risks enhanced, with little evidence that its intervention can slow its decline.

At the nexus of so many powerful intersecting fault lines, it is hard to imagine Russia success­fully reclaiming its lost former hegemony across much of Eurasia through any planned restoration of its imperial project.

At the nexus of so many powerful intersecting fault lines, it is hard to imagine Russia successfully reclaiming its lost former hegemony across much of Eurasia through any planned res­toration of its imperial project. To the contrary, it is easily imag­inable—easily, because we have already seen the broad outlines of Russia’s geopolitical neurosis— that Russia will lurch this way and that as its window of opportunity to assert itself closes. The danger is not Russian imperial overreach, which it cannot sustain. Rather it is Russia miscalculating risks it feels it must take to remain competitive against other forces seeking their own opportunities in the context of Russian decline.

China

Russia’s decline is already creating a vacuum at the center of Eurasia, and China has moved steadily into it. An increasingly popular scenario for post‑ Russia Eurasia features China chalking up gain after gain through its economic diplomacy. In the after­math of the COVID‑19 crisis, this scenario will likely have even more traction, as states whose economies were devastated by the pandemic seek economic assis­tance from China’s apparently robust checkbook. Some inland economies of Eurasia that seek to strengthen logistic supply chains also will seek China’s help as the solution. (But not everyone. Uzbekistan has agreed to use Pakistan’s major sea ports for its trade, a clear hedge to China’s om­nipresence.)

China is either the first or second largest importer for most Central Asian states (Turkmenistan is an exception), and the first or second export destination for most (Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan are exceptions.) It is strong in the South Caucasus, as well. Georgia is a particular target of Chinese interest. The two have signed a free trade agreement, and China has undertaken a number of infrastructure projects in Georgia. It would be unsurprising if China were to make a play for the stalled Anaklia deepwater port project, which would bid an essential part in its larger national security ambitions. This would add another piece to China’s “string of pearls”— port facilities it owns or controls— stretching from the South China Sea to Europe, and it would add another layer of economic integration to in­vestments related to the Belt and Road Initiative across the region. For its part, Georgia might in this way secure some immunity against an aggres­sive Russia, which might consider an intervention that endangers China’s investment to be a risk it is unwilling to take.

China’s investment is not welcomed everywhere in Central Asia, and the security forces China often imports to protect its investment are deeply resented. A short time ago, China faced former Soviet republics struggling to find sovereign traction across the border, but today it faces fully independent states with defined political, economic, and security interests. Most exercise developed foreign policies and dip­lomatic relations around the globe that have broken the Central Asians’ isolation. These Central Asians view China’s campaign to “re‑educate” its own Uighur population by con­fining them to prison camps as ev­idence of China’s weakness, not of its strength. The Chinese campaign clearly is not intended to woo the confidence and affection of the eth­nically and religiously related citi­zens of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyr­gyzstan, and the other Central Asian states. To the contrary, it reveals China’s fear that the winds of change blowing across the border, have the potential to infect Xinjiang and beyond, deep into China.

If one were simply to project to­day’s visible trends into the future, a China‑dominated Central Asia would loom large. China would— little by little, deal by deal, loan by loan—take over Russia’s role as Cen­tral Asia’s acknowledged hegemon. But this kind of trend following and linear projection often misses the driving forces of futures that ul­timately emerge. A China‑dominated Central Asia could be wrong‑headed for a number of reasons. A growing body of research argues that China will become more fragile than ro­bust in the next few decades, as its economy struggles, human capital deteriorates, technological aptitude sputters, and ability to innovate founders. The China we know al­ready is characterized by powerful tensions that intersect across its po­litical, economic, regional, ethnic, demographic, social, and cultural fault lines.

What if China fails? And what if China’s failure and Russia’s decline co­incide, and their inter­action intensifies the dy­namics of both?

 So it is appropriate to ask: What if China fails? And what if China’s failure and Russia’s de­cline coincide, and their interaction intensifies the dynamics of both?

No part of Eurasia would be un­affected by such a scenario. One does not have to assign probability to it to agree that it is plausible and, hence, possible.

Iran

Of more immediate geopolit­ical significance is China’s budding alliance with Iran. Dis­cussed between the parties since 2016, this alignment was recently codified in a 25‑year pact begin­ning in 2020. It will harness the two powers economically, militarily, and politically. In many ways, this connection, if successful, could be one of the more permanent building blocks of 2040’s potential geopolitics and serve as one of the most powerful drivers of other ac­tors’ strategies.

The linkup could be a lifesaver for Iran, which otherwise is trending once again toward internal revolu­tion resulting from an economy col­lapsing from state mismanagement, low energy prices, and Western sanc­tions. At no time in recent history has Iran been willing to sacrifice so much of its sovereignty to avoid this outcome, an indication of how serious the Iranian regime assesses its situation to be. As reported, the agreement tethers Iran’s energy in­dustry to China, as the latter invests $280 billion in developing Iran’s gas, oil, and petrochemicals, while offering Chinese energy companies first right of refusal in developing them. Another $120 billion of Chi­nese investment will go into Iran’s transport and manufacturing sectors with similar concessions, while development of Iran’s 5G telecommu­nications network also falls to China.

The injection of Chinese “se­curity personnel” into Iran—at least 5000 strong, with still others to guarantee shipment of en­ergy to China overland or via the Persian Gulf—are a central part of the agreement, which logically points to China linking to and sup­plying weapons and technology— and perhaps nuclear capability—to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and military. Payment in soft currencies will allow the par­ties to avoid using American dol­lars, thus hedging against sanctions. A new Silk Road con­necting Urumqi to Tabriz via Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan is envisioned, probably with, yet perhaps without Russia’s acquiescence, which will become less necessary as Russia de­clines, in any case.

China’s embrace of Iran brings Beijing closer to many cher­ished objectives. It will empower China to weave Central Asian states more deeply into its geoeconomics web, increase its flanking of India in the north and west, create a largely proprietary energy supply at highly favorable prices from Iranian fields whose output is boosted by Chinese investment and compa­nies, successfully transport and store Iran’s energy in the face of American sanctions and prohibi­tions, and plant China’s military in the pivot of Eurasia.

A deep and sustainable China‑ Iran alignment should be a pow­erful driver of scenarios for Eurasia’s future.

If the China‑Iran strate­gic partnership—hinged to China’s existing stra­tegic relationship with Pakistan—works as its partners envision...

If the China‑Iran strategic partnership—hinged to China’s existing strategic relationship with Pakistan—works as its partners envision, it is hard to imagine an­other coalition of powers with equal potential for radically trans­forming not just Eurasia’s geopoli­tics but arguably the geopolitics of the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe, too. Arab states would likely move more rapidly to ally with each other—and even with Israel—to thwart Iran’s new swagger. India might overcome its strategic reluctance to go full into a security alliance with the United States, Japan, Australia, and others in Asia to offset China’s extended Eurasian footprint. Central Asian states that have employed Russia’s influence to balance China will find this gambit less effective as Russia declines and the China‑Iran con­nection solidifies. The European Union, with no coherent policy towards change in Eurasia and no military to enforce one even if it could manage to pound one out, would likely deepen its accommo­dation of China while supporting Iran against the United States.

And lastly, with a powerful China‑ Iran combination threatening to dominate its neighborhood, Turkey might finally solve its national iden­tity crisis: East or West or Ottoman. Its efforts to balance this challenge, or bandwagon with it, would un­doubtedly influence Eurasia’s stra­tegic dynamics decisively.

Turkey

Turkey’s aspirations and growing capabilities will add an additional layer to any complex scenario of Eurasia’s geopolitical horizons.

In almost every imagin­able scenario, Turkey is a critical uncertainty. It has flirted at one time or an­other with all of Eurasia’s key players, sometimes as friend and sometimes as adversary.

In almost every imagin­able scenario, Turkey is a critical uncertainty. It has flirted at one time or another with all of Eurasia’s key players, sometimes as friend and sometimes as adversary. By 2040, we may plausibly assume that it will benefit substantially from recent energy discoveries in the Black Sea, including energy inde­pendence from Russia. This may or may not allow Turkey to put its financial house in order and rescue its troubled banking system. But it will certainly whet the appetite of Turkish strategists who envision a significant expansion of Turkey’s regional influence; a reconsideration—and perhaps a reordering— of Turkey’s relationship to Europe and the United States; and a re­source base to build Turkey’s mili­tary to support these objectives. If the Turks conclude that China will or might contribute to Iran’s nu­clear weapons ambitions, a nuclear Turkey will not be far behind.

In Syria, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean, and even in the Karabakh theater, Turkey showed yet another instru­ment that it is no longer reluctant to use beyond its bor­ders: its powerful modern military. Russia, in partic­ular, can no longer harbor illusions that the Turks can be bluffed and coerced to abandon their interests or ambitions to pla­cate Moscow. Among Russian military planners, who struggle to develop the next generation of weapons for their own military, the specter of Turkey’s drones defining the battle spaces in which they op­erate must be a powerful attention grabber. Turkey is now capable— and apparently willing—to call Russia’s bluff. A Turkey capable of projecting power credibly becomes a potential game changer for any scenario of Eurasia in 2040.

But what do we know about how Turks think about their future? What is their national vision of themselves? Can they be simultane­ously oriented to the West; neo‑Ot­toman; a Central Asian, Cauca­sian, and Balkan power; a modern Muslim democracy; a member of NATO and (sometimes) of Europe; or any number of other things? Is the Hagia Sophia a mosque, a cathe­dral, or a historical monument? Per­haps Turkey is all of these things and that its seemingly fractured strategic profile can never be fit together in any coherent pattern. Perhaps the Turks themselves don’t know. Perhaps Tur­key’s central geography, with direct borders with seven countries and strategic proximity to many more via long coastlines on the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, makes it impossible to pin down the mix of Turkey’s historical ex­perience, vital interests, shared as­pirations—that is, what Turks see as their destiny—more concretely. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Clearly unraveling the critical uncertainty of “whither Turkey?” logically should begin by understanding what Turkey sees itself to be, but also what it sees itself becoming. But is anyone doing this work?

2040

Scenarios that attempt to imagine Eurasia in the next 20 years should be heavily in­formed by the following kind of research and thinking: who are the players, to what do they attribute the sources of power in their na­tionhood, and where, as nations, do they see themselves located amongst other players whose own sense of national power and des­tiny might collide or converge with their own?

Yet today’s most common dis­cussion of geopolitical scenarios is about the return of competition between great powers, almost to the point of cliché. It is hard to imagine where great power com­petition could take place in the Eurasian heartland if one for­merly powerful state—Russia—has been reduced to a regional power at best; while the United States, a true great power, remains con­fused or ambiguous about its own national interests in Eurasia, has no strategy for Eurasia, and in­vests its efforts further east; and the European Union, which likes to think of itself as a great power but has neither the cohesion, the aspiration, or the capability to be one continues its naval gazing in search of its transcendent “values.” China is likely to be the only large power of any heft with a vision of its dominance in Eurasia in con­cert with its vital interests. That is, unless China fails.

If this surmise has value, it should be to focus scenarios in a somewhat different direction, namely toward competition below the “great power” threshold. How will Iran deal with its growing economic and military subordi­nation to China? Will this be a comfortable relationship, and for how long? How might China’s sway over much of Eurasia’s stra­tegic space affect Turkey’s own expanding Eurasian vision—and its growing military capability to pursue it? Where will Russia seek support against the strong prob­ability that it will be reduced in potential, power, and, especially, geographic size? Who else might come into this competition? India is a Eurasian state with growing global ambitions and military power, and, lest it be forgotten, a strong resistance to China’s inces­sant efforts to flank it. How does New Delhi play its hand, and can it attract other outside powers to as­sist it—Japan or the United States, for example? In this sense, does great power competition come to Eurasia’s heartland as a result of outsiders combining their capabil­ities to get inside?

Scenarios that feature lesser but capable powers within the Eur­asian space aligning and realigning to increase their strategic trac­tion—even if China’s heavy weight is hanging over them—are likely to reveal dynamics that portend futures about which we currently give little thought. Great Power competition is a familiar analyt­ical paradigm, but because it is familiar, embracing it uncritically risks intellectual laziness. Eurasia‑in‑2040’s dynamics will not be so easy to characterize, and the range of alternative futures arising from surprises is likely much wider than we now imagine.