[lbo-talk] Aspect of India's Econ Report:TheRealStateofIndia'sEconomy

[Chris Doss]

This part of the world is also becoming integrated (reintegrated, actually) and some people are talking about an EU of sorts in the post-Soviet territory. I have no doubt that economic and political integration is going to accelerate in the CIS, but, for a similar reason to that you mentioned, an EU-like model is probably out of the question: The power discrepancies are too vast, and the economy of the region is too dependent on one centralized source: Russia (or more precisely Russia's gas and oil fields). Too a large extent, the economies of most countries in the CIS are excrescences of Russia's, in some cases literally subsidized by Moscow (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia), or living off of exports to Russia, transit tariffs placed on deliveries of Russian oil and gas (Ukraine), or money sent home by gastarbeitery -- Russian has imported the German word -- in the case of Tajikistan, Moldova, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Georgia and in fact most places. I therefore predict that reintegration of

 the post-Soviet space will therefore take place largely on Russia's terms. Incidentally this has Russian/Belarussian reunion stalled: Russia wants to incorporate Belarus as just another province, which Lukashenko says is unacceptable. (Plus Belarusian businesses would probably be snapped up by monsters like LUKoil in a heartbeat.)

 
An interesting exception is Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan actually posted higher growth than Russia last year, has a lot of natural resources, and could probably play Russia and China off against each other. It will be interesting to see what happens.

South East Asia is already devising an EU-like structure, based on ASEAN.
Integration of ASEAN with mainland China, India or Japan is unlikely (IMO)
because any _one_ of these would dominate the South East Asian states
economically, and in terms of population.

Grant.

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