The Western-led war against Iraq in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to a so-called “New World Order” dominated by the United States. A unipolar world in which the US and its European NATO allies seek to direct and control all nations, while exporting free market capitalism to every corner of the globe.

At the end of the 1990s, the forces of independence and dignity in Asia, Africa and South America, representing the majority of the inhabitants of our planet, began to call for a multipolar world in opposition to the unipolar order shaped by Washington. Confronted by the reality of globalisation and the subtle neo-colonialist agenda of the West, Africa is seeking greater unity and cooperation. South America is looking for regional integration and a united continental response to common problems. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s forced the countries of South East Asia to reexamine their relationship with the United States and Western-controlled global financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the 2000 meeting of OPEC, noted that the 21st century is “not going to be unipolar. The 21st century should be multipolar, and we all ought to push for the development of such a world.”

In Russia, the Speaker of the State Parliament (Duma) Gennady Seleznez warned of the dangers posed by a unipolar world:

In the present moment we have two global scenarios of this world order in formation – the unipolar (American-centred) one and the multipolar one (alternative to the America-centred). The unipolar world, which today is de facto established as a result of the exit from the world scene of the mighty Soviet bloc, generates more problems than it solves. At the basis of the unipolar project of ‘globalisation’ or ‘mondialisation’ lays the idea of the so-called ‘Pax Americana’, of the ‘American-way-of-peace’. It supposes not simply the guiding role of the US in the creation of such a world system, but also imposing on all peoples and states on earth the ‘American way of life’, the liberal-democratic system of values, the universalisation and forced assimilation of those cultural, social, political and economic principles which historically developed only in one sector of mankind – in Western Europe – and reached their apogee in the Anglo-Saxon environment (Great Britain, after the US).

Confronted by a world dominated by the US capitalist oligarchy, the Russian opposition leader Gennady Zyuganov commented, “We [Russians] are the last power on this planet that is capable of mounting a challenge to the New World Order – the global cosmopolitan dictatorship.” Zyuganov’s position has much in common with some of the 20th century’s great spiritual teachers who, despite the ravages of war and repression, saw Russia as the future home of universal renewal. They praised the deeply rooted mystical spirit of the Russian people and looked to Russia to provide the ‘light from the East to irradiate the West’.

Following the election of President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a foreign policy document warning of the “strengthening tendency towards the formation of a unipolar world under financial and military domination by the United States.” In response a priority of Russian foreign policy is to “seek to achieve a multi-polar system of international relations that really reflects the diversity of the modern world with its great variety of interests.” The Russian Foreign Ministry also described Russia’s most important strength as its “geopolitical position as the largest Eurasian state.”

At the dawn of the 21st century a new geopolitical bloc is emerging as a positive counter to the efforts by the US and NATO to impose and maintain a unipolar world order. This new continental bloc, with its own unique sociopolitical and spiritual values, is “Eurasia”. Early last century in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution a group of Russian thinkers sought to define the scholarly and political movement called “Eurasianism” that had gained widespread popularity in the 1920s. In 1927 they wrote:

Who are the Eurasians? What do they want to achieve? Eurasians are those who have revealed Russia as a special cultural-historical world. They are those for whom Russia is not just a state but one-sixth of the world; not Europe and not Asia but a special middle continent – Eurasia with its self-assertive culture and a special historical fate. To copy Western forms of life is unnatural for Russia-Eurasia.

Such copying has entailed and will continue to entail the hardest shocks for our country. Russia has no need for either a police autocracy of the Prussian type or a parliamentary democracy that camouflages the dictatorship of European and world capital. As for communism, which proclaimed a battle against capitalism but, having been itself generated by European capitalism, has deceived the expectations of the working people – it has degenerated into a form of rule by a corrupt bureaucracy.

Addressing a meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in late 2000, the Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasised: “Russia always felt itself as a Eurasian country. We never forgot that the main part of the Russian territory is in Asia.”

On the eve of the year 2000, Vladimir Putin, had said: “Every country, Russia included, has to search for its own way of renewal. We have not been very successful in this respect thus far. Only in the past year or the past two years we have started groping for our road and our model of transformation.”

Post Soviet Russia’s exclusive pro-Western orientation constituted a fundamental mistake of historic magnitude. Russia is not Europe and her geopolitical needs are markedly different ones. The United States, which openly behaves in a belligerent manner towards Russia, will never accept Russia as an equal partner or as a great power. Similarly, Europe will never admit Russia to the inner circle of Western states. There remains only one strategy for the Russian Federation, to turn its energies towards the East.

Russia’s mission in the world of the 21st century is not to imitate the West but to initiate and support a multilateral dialogue of cultures, civilisations and states. Russia is uniquely placed to stimulate a real dialogue between Orthodox Christian, Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The essence of Russia’s juxtaposition between Europe and Asia is its centuries-long adherence to a non-ethnic-orientated mentality. The West with its ethnocentric psychology and history of brutal colonialism and religious intolerance has always found it difficult to come to terms with genuine diversity and religious pluralism. Rather than weakening Russia, ethnic diversity strengthened it and assisted its economic, social and spiritual development. The Eurasian orientation sees Russia fulfilling its role as a conciliator, Russia connecting, Russia combining, working for a harmonious interplay of different principles.

On the geopolitical level the New Eurasian concept can be viewed as three spheres or circles of strategic partnership and good-neighbour cooperation. The first sphere is the Eurasian heartland made up of the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States (most of the countries of the former USSR). The second sphere extends to include a strategic alliance between China, India, Iran, Iraq, and the Korean peninsula. The third sphere brings Eurasian cooperation to the Asia Pacific region, including the Southern Hemisphere nations of Australia and New Zealand. From this grand Eurasian alliance close cooperative relations would flourish with Africa and the states of Central and South America, who are already finding their own paths to continental integration. Also the New Eurasian orientation gives fresh momentum to a mutually beneficial, peaceful and equitable relationship with Europe. The great land bridge of Eurasia would bring together the East and the West, facilitating closer economic cooperation and a heightened dialogue between cultures and civilisations. Finally, New Eurasia offers the people of the West, particularly the United States, an alternative to the exploitation and injustice of the American oligarchy. As Russia’s leading Eurasian thinker, Alexander Dugin, has emphasised:

At a planetary level Eurasianism means active and universal opposition to globalisation, and is equal to the ‘anti-globalist movement’. Eurasianism defends the blossoming complexity of peoples, religions and nations. All anti-globalist tendencies are intrinsically ‘Eurasianist’. We are consequent supporters of ‘Eurasianist Federalism’. This means a combination of strategic unity and ethno-cultural autonomies.

Viewed from the historical perspective, the development of civilisations, as well as social and cultural imperatives, the Eurasian idea can be seen as the only realistic counter to present Anglo-American global hegemony with its freemarket capitalism and disrespect for national sovereignty. Eurasia provides the motivating idea capable of defeating the Anglo-American Establishment along with its usurious-mercantile mentality.

Eurasia is above all a worldview, a new and dynamic vision of geopolitics in the 3rd millennium, with unique cultural, political, economic and spiritual dimensions.

Early last century the proponents of the Eurasian idea proclaimed two vital aphorisms: ‘Know Yourself’ and ‘Be Yourself’. The great Eurasian thinker N.S. Trubetskoi insisted that each nation formed a psychological whole analogous to the complex personality of the individual. Self-knowledge is the highest purpose of the individual. The supreme duty of any nation, as of each person, is also self-knowledge, two endeavours that reinforce each other. Individuals in discovering themselves grow to know their national characteristics, adding to the national culture. Eurasia is also the harbinger of a spiritual renaissance, the rediscovery of a traditional wisdom able to inspire and guide people in the 21st century.