Book Launch – Putin’s Grand Strategy: The Eurasian Union and Its Discontents

ISPD FORUM with Mr. James Sherr, Dr. Svante E. Cornell & Dr. Johan Engvall

Thursday, September 25, 2014, 10.00-11.30

Over the past year ISDP and its partner Institute, the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University-SAIS have assembled a group of leading American and European experts to produce the first book-length study of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s effort to create a Eurasian Union. The book indicates the ideological origins and character of this project; focusing not only on Putin’s strategic objectives but the tactics he employs to achieve them The volume stresses the high degree of coordination that has been achieved among sectors of the Russian state that are accustomed to function as sovereign bureaucracies. Subsequent chapters analyze the response of eleven post-Soviet states to Putin’s initiative, as well as the attitudes towards it of China, Europe and the United States. The book suggests that the project, if successful, would jeopardize the gains of two decades of independence in countries ranging from Moldova to Tajikistan, but also traces the processes by which those potentially affected have already worked to limit, dilute,and even undermine it even before it comes into being.

Dr. Svante Cornell is Director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy and Research Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center, operated by ISDP in cooperation with Johns Hopkins University-SAIS. He is one of the authors of the Silk Road Paper Looking Forward: Kazakhstan and the United States, 2014 and the author of the book Azerbaijan Since Independence, 2011.

Dr. Johan Engvall is researcher at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and a Research Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program. He is the author of the book The State as Investment Market: Making Sense of Corruption in Kyrgyzstan, which has also been translated into Russian.

Mr. James Sherr is an associate fellow and former Head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chathan House. He has published widely and is the author of Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: Russia’s Influence Abroad, 2013.

Follow this link to read the book:
Putin’s Grand Strategy: The Eurasian Union and Its Discontents

To attend: RSVP to Ms. Pauline Dupuis at pdupuis@isdp.euLocation: ISDP, Västra Finnbodavägen 2, Stockholm-Nacka. For a map and directions, please go here.