The rise of an Eastern bloc?

Author：FDDI Release date：2025-03-26 00:24:41Source：发展研究院英文

Global Think Tank Center Academic Activities

FDDI Overseas Visiting Scholar Seminar (91)

Speaker

Dr. Zeno Leoni

Assistant Professor of Defense Studies at the Department of Defence Studies, King's College London；Visiting Scholar, Fudan Development Institute

Chair

Dr. Ma Bin

Associate Professor at the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies, IIS, and Deputy Director of the Center for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Studies, Fudan University

Host

Fudan Development Institute

Time

2025.03.27 10:00-11:30

10:00-11:30 am, March 27, 2025

Venue

Room 203, Think Tank Building，

Fudan University

Abstract

This presentation focuses on a draft chapter of a book that I am currently writing. The book’s title is the The Return of Geopolitical Blocs and it describes how the world order has been increasingly divided in competing blocs, especially since the latest Russo-Ukrainian War (24 February 2022). While the book project contains a review of the literature on the crisis of the liberal international order, a chapter on the West, East, and Global South, this presentation focuses on the Eastern bloc. In particular, it argues that in recent years there has been increasing coordination in foreign and defence policy between four countries, such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The chapter maintains that this renewed coordination is the result of a reaction to geostrategic containment of the US, and that this has led to some cohesion between these very different countries. Ultimately, the Eastern bloc is an anti-Western one.