From the “Polar Silk Road” to the Arctic Rimland : A Case Study of the Belt and Road Challenges for the European Union

“If the country through which the route runs be weak, and the route of great significance, the section in question may well become a bone of contention among the great powers of the world and may pay for its advantageous location with its independence”. SPYKMAN Nicholas J., “Geography and Foreign Policy, I”, The American Political Science Review, vol. 32, No. 1, 1938, pp. 28–50.

The way the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is dealt with in Europe is at best curious, at worst desperately misleading. While it is still largely unknown to the general public, some nevertheless feel it is necessary to question on a regular basis the stakes it represents for the European Union (EU) and its members, and even its very existence. For these thinkers, the subject remains sensitive, and the danger so much ideological as economic. It must therefore be asked whether the strongest ideology is not that of these observers, who cling tenaciously to past chimeras, to the “end of history,” and offer only a sketchy vision of the “shock” of hermetic civilizations…