2016 Issue №4

Russia needs to fit into the international geopolitical and geo-economic landscape. The formation of this landscape is largely determined by alternating integration and disintegration cycles in the development of the world economy. The second global disintegration cycle that started in 2008 is expected to last 15—20 years. It will be followed by a new integration cycle, largely dependent on China (Pax Sinensis instead of Pax Americana). This change necessitates a number of steps: a significant strengthening of the Eastern vector in the development of Russia, the formation of the Moscow-Beijing-New Delhi triangle (Evgeny Primakov's idea) as well as providing access of energy-intensive and water-intensive goods from East Siberia by railway to the Chinese and Indian markets. Russia has expressed its interest in the construction of a railway from China to India. It will allow Russia to reduce transportation costs and use a potentially heavy transit traffic for the modernization of the Transsibirian railway. These steps could radically change the role of the Baltic exclave of Russia: from being a ‘window to Europe’ the region is to turn into the westernmost point of a infrastructure axis extending from east to west. The creation of such an axis, combined with a sharp fall in transportation costs will facilitate the access of energy-intensive and water-intensive goods from the Urals and Siberia to the Asian and European markets. The Kaliningrad region is increasingly taking on business facilitating functions, which used to be performed by the Soviet Baltic republics in the past. The region can play a more important role in the formation of Eurasia stretching from Shanghai to St. Petersburg (according to Dmitry Trenin), instead of the Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

The article describes the process and results of the geopolitical and geoeconomic changes in the Baltic Sea region at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries. The authors assess the political, economic and military potential of individual countries and groups of countries. Ranking the selected countries and grouping them according to the similarity of their characteristics requires a variety of methods — the economic, statistical, cartographic, graphic-analytical methods, to name just a few. In the late 1980s — early 1990s, there were three socialist countries in the Baltic Sea region. They were signatories of the Warsaw Pact and members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (the Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany). The Baltic Sea region housed four market economies (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany). Only two of them were members of NATO and the EU (Germany and Denmark). At present, there are eight EU countries in the region; six of them are NATO members (Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), and the same two countries, Sweden and Finland, remain outside the bloc. Russia, the legal successor of the USSR, is neither a NATO, nor an EU member. The authors explore similarities and differences between countries of the Baltic Sea region in terms of their territory, population, GDP, foreign trade turnover and the number of regular armed forces. The article stresses the importance of international cooperation in increasing the growth rates of economic development of all countries of the Baltic Sea region.