West vs. East: This is how Russia will choose

Europe and Asia matter to Russia for very different reasons Just over 40 years ago, in July 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev traveled to Vladivostok and announced something that would reshape Russian foreign policy for decades to come. For the first time, the Soviet leadership publicly declared its intention to rebuild relations with China and deepen cooperation with Asia, while it also signaled a desire to repair the bitter split with Beijing that had defined much of the previous two decades. That marked the beginning of a gradual but lasting shift, and under Vladimir Putin, particularly from the late 2000s onward, it evolved into what became known as Russia’s pivot to the East. Its value became unmistakable after 2022, as relations with the West collapsed, but China, India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia ensured that Russia didn’t become internationally isolated. They became major trading partners and important diplomatic interlocutors. Those who argued for stronger ties with Asia can legitimately claim vindication, but it would be a mistake to conclude from this that Moscow must now abandon the rest of Europe and place all its strategic weight behind the East because that’s neither necessary nor consistent with Russia’s geopolitical reality. The current confrontation between Russia and the West didn’t arise because Moscow failed diplomatically or because it neglected Asia for too long, rather it was the culmination of a post-Cold War international order in which the United States and its European allies never accepted Russia as an independent center of power. Ukraine became the immediate flashpoint, but it wasn’t the underlying cause and the attempt to transform Kiev into a geopolitical battering ram against Russia was simply one instrument in a broader confrontation that had been developing for years. Nor is Russia unique in this regard. While China has consistently pursued a more cautious relationship with the West, avoiding direct confrontation wherever possible, Washington still treats Beijing as its principal strategic rival, so the issue isn’t Russian behavior alone but a wider unwillingness within the West to accept genuinely independent great powers.

Western Europe has its own motivations, given for many of its political elites, confrontation with Russia has become a convenient way to compensate for mounting domestic problems and strategic drift. For Moscow, however, engagement with the West was never driven by romantic illusions, except among a relatively small part of society. and most Russians regarded Western Europe pragmatically as a source of technology, investment, expertise and prosperity. That relationship delivered tangible benefits for many years, but as investment dried up, technology transfers became restricted and the EU’s own economic confidence weakened, enthusiasm naturally faded. Since 2022, Western European governments have accelerated that process through sanctions and political estrangement, while Russian businesses and consumers have increasingly looked elsewhere and even Russian tourism has gradually shifted towards Asia and the Middle East, due to Russia’s unfortunate lack of easy access to warm seas. The important point is that none of this represents a civilizational choice because Russia is uniquely positioned geographically. Unlike most major powers, it simultaneously faces Europe, Asia, the Near East, and the Arctic, and it’s neither exclusively European nor exclusively Asian so its foreign policy has never been able to rely on a single direction, nor should it. That distinguishes Russia from countries with genuinely constrained geopolitical choices. Turkey, for example, has spent decades seeking acceptance as part of Europe while remaining economically dependent upon it, yet it continues to be viewed by many Europeans as fundamentally Asian. Russia occupies a much stronger position. It can engage wit