SCO, BRICS, and EAU most likely to become serious competitors to US and NATO - expert

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The West should not underestimate the role of the Eurasian Union in international affairs, says Nikolas K. Gvosdev, professor of national-security studies at the US Naval War College and a contributing editor at The National Interest.

Two other institutions - the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS forum - were likewise dismissed as irrelevant, meaningless efforts at their times of creation but, both have proved their efficiency and durability over the years, the expert stresses.

"From the US perspective, both the SCO and BRICS are much weaker institutions compared especially with the established entities of the Euro-Atlantic world, particularly NATO and the European Union but Washington should not take particular comfort in that fact," writes Nikolas Gvosdev.

The expert notes that on the other hand, US efforts to create lasting, sustainable post-Cold War institutions have not fared particularly well, as neither the Community of Democracies has become a powerful or influential bloc, nor has a global NATO initiative resonated with the majority of the US's West European, East Asian or global South allies.

Meanwhile, Putin's approach to institution building has proved its efficiency: BRICS and SCO did not set overly ambitious goals for themselves but have, eventually, grown into a substantive counterbalance to the Euro-Atlantic dominance.

"It is also laying the foundations for an alternate Russo-Chinese vision of a new Silk Road that would compete with the preferred Western Silk Road approach, one which would tie western Eurasia to the Far East, rather than acting as a way to pull Central Asia into a closer connection with the Euro-Atlantic world," writes the expert.

The US New Silk Road project envisages the exceptional role of the United States in the integration processes in Central Asia. "For centuries, the nations of South and Central Asia were connected to each other and the rest of the continent by a sprawling trading network called the Silk Road," said Hillary Clinton at the New Silk Road Ministerial Meeting in 2011, "Let's set our sights on a new Silk Road, a web of economic and transit connections that will bind together a region too long torn apart by conflict and division. If we do not pledge ourselves to a new economic vision for the region, I do not think that a more prosperous future is as likely."

Worries about the ability of the United States to project its power deep into the Eurasian heartland reinforces the Russo-Chinese rapprochement process, says Nikolas Gvosdev, and to some extent catalyzes the development of a Eurasian Union.

Although the SCO and BRICS may not come close to "emulating the European Union and NATO, they are inculcating and reinforcing habits of cooperation among their members that could become the foundations for more serious economic and security cooperation," claims the expert. He believes that Eurasian Union will follow this path.

"The SCO, BRICS, and now the Eurasian Union are <…> a reflection of a "new, flexible, and dynamic approach on the part of Russian foreign policy, seeking to maximize Russia's influence on the world stage... the effort is underway to hitch Russia's chariot to the energy and dynamism of the rising powers as a way of retaining Russia's relevance as a global player,"

 Nikolas Gvosdev emphasizes, adding that the US ought to take this process much more seriously.