NEWS & EVENTS

Will COVID-19 Curtail European-Eurasian Integration?

Eurasia is the world’s largest landmass, whose increasing connectivity powered by new technological and political realities is running across the continent, at least before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since early 2020, the pandemic’s formidable shocks have not spared the continent, generating significant consequences for this strategic region. But what is the true extent of the shocks? What exactly are the emerging or foreseeable outcomes of the current pandemic for the continent? And what does COVID-19 leave us for the future of Eurasian integration, a renewed push, or a lost opportunity?

This October 6th webinar, co-hosted by the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies and European and Eurasian Studies Department at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies | SAIS as well as the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, answered these questions from perspectives of several major powers of the continent. The director of the Reischauer Center, Dr. Kent Calder, whose 2019 book Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration by Stanford University Press touches the very same topic, moderated the webinar. Other speakers included Professor Marsha McGraw Olive from European Eurasian Studies of JHU SAIS, Professor Nargis Kassenova from Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, Dr. Jacopo Maria Pepe from SWP-German Institute for International and Security Affairs, and Ms. Yun Han, a doctoral candidate at SAIS.

The panelists shared reflections from Germany, Hungary, Greece, Russia, and Central Asia on the progress and setbacks of Eurasian integration during the pandemic. In the discussion, they also answered questions on the pandemic’s effects on innovations and new policies from the region.