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Introduction: From Greater Europe to Greater Eurasia
This Special Issue is a project of the `International Laboratory on International Order Studies and the New Regionalism’ of the Higher School of Economics. It examines four key issues. First, at the most abstract level, the collection looks at the profound shift in economic and political power from the West to the East. The definition of both terms—East and West—will be contextualized, but it is clear that we need profound study of political spatiality to provide deeper framing of the epochal move of the center of economic gravity to the East, and with it shifts in global power and the very terms in which power, influence, and status are assessed. The “West” as a political concept was devised during the Cold War, but it is now being disaggregated; while the “East” is taking on new political forms and becoming more assertive in expression. The new East is not necessarily commensurate with the West in political and order-making terms, and thus a new East-West rivalry has emerged, accompanied by continuing North-South contradictions. The ability of the ideology of globalization to smooth over these antinomies is weakening.