What Fills the Space Between
Europe and Asia have long been seen as separated spaces. This should no longer be the case. An integrated supercontinent is emerging not simply because of geographical and economic integration rendered possible by the technological innovations and globalization of the previous century. Bruno Maçães, Portugal’s former Europe Minister, argues here that the rise of Asia, combined with a receding Europe, makes the integration real and imminent.
A main reason why Eurasia is emergent as an integrated space is the rise of new great powers, China and Russia in particular, whose ambitious interests go far beyond their borders and intersect in increasingly complex patterns. Maçães also contends that Eurasia is not a geographical but a political term, because it refers to a new world order in which the interdependency and connectivity of the past century’s globalization is joined with the recognition of division and conflict. The two halves of the word, Europe and Asia, point to different agents, while the synthesis of the two conjures the external context within which they must act, continuously trying to shape a shared framework in their own image. A new order to fill the integrated space has yet to emerge, as different agents in each half compete with each other through their own geopolitical imagination, making the integration process “competitive.”
Maçães eventually suggests Eurasia as a way of signaling a new balance between the two poles — the West (Europe and the US) and Asia. The winds of modernity have for centuries blown from West to East, but now they have begun to reverse.