Foreign Alternatives to Eurasianism as a Potential Challenge for Russia

The article explores the issues of political theories which are considered to be an alternative to Russian Eurasian integration. The author proves that there used to be a range of political theories in the UK, Germany and the USA that reminded of Russian Eurasian policy. Those theories were based on six ideologemes, immanent in Eurasian context: 1) the concept of regarding ‘Eurasia’ as a distinctive civilization stemming from both European and Asian cultures; 2) cancellation of the previously existing European view of the dichotomy in the ‘West — East’ concept; 3) fusion of ‘West’ and ‘East’ (as seen from the European viewpoint) into a certain new form; 4) blending of history of a particular national state into history of Eurasia; 5) postulation of the imperial project which involves this ‘special Eurasion’ civilization; 6) opposition between the ‘Eurasian world’ and the ‘Western world’, in which the latter remains adversarial in relation to the former. At various times, similar ideas were discussed in the UK (within Indo-European linguistics), Germany (Ariosophy), the USA (the AfPak and the ‘Indo-Pacifica’ projects). The British version of Eurasia concept was based on India, the German version — on Tibet, and the American version — on Pakistan and India. These theories were focused on projects of building empires or blocks, combining Western with non-Western countries of Eurasia. In each version the UK, Germany and the USA are presented as special empires and/or great states, comprising both European and Asian features. All of these versions demonstrate the attempts to create a system (culture or civilization) that has not entirely European or Asian identity. Moreover, the designed ‘quasi-Eurasian’ projects have always been adversary in regard to Russian Eurasian concept because they did not include any collaboration with Russia, but rather confrontation.