Eurasia Review
21 September 2016
- RSIS
- Media Mentions
- Eurasia’s Economic Union and ASEAN: Why Interaction is Important – Analysis
Eurasia’s Economic Union and ASEAN: Why Interaction is Important – Analysis
Members of the emerging Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) are reaching out to Southeast Asian countries to balance China’s growing influence in Eurasia. What are the implications for ASEAN?
President Vladimir Putin, at the Russia-ASEAN Summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in May this year, talked about the activation of relations between Russia and ASEAN. Earlier, at the Astana summit of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the Kazakhstan president proposed to all countries to devote this year to the cooperation with other international associations, including ASEAN. A month later, at the June summit of EEU, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) countries discussed the possibility of cooperation between EEU, SCO and ASEAN.
Two key questions arose: Firstly, why are the former post-Soviet states leaning in the direction of ASEAN? Secondly, what are the opportunities and obstacles in cooperating with ASEAN?
… Aidar Amrebayev is the head of the Centre of Applied Political Science and International Studies in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow with the China Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
IDSS / Online
