(PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo) The term “shared neighborhood” is applied when a nation or a group of nations is geographically located between disproportionally larger states, relations with which are critically important for the smaller nations. The major powers are also, for various reasons, fixated on interacting with the smaller in-between nations. Importantly, the two-level game of interactions between the major powers and smaller nations is strongly conditioned by the status and dynamics of relations between the major powers themselves. Presumably, it is a shared neighborhood that can cause the most acute international affairs disagreements and be a battlefield in the case of conflicting relations between powers. In post-Soviet Eurasia, the assorted interests of the major powers often and directly collide over the neighborhood. Russia, thanks to its size, geographical location, and imperial past, has two such primary shared neighborhoods at once: its western neighborhood—Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and partly the Caucasus—predominantly shared with the European Union, and it has its eastern neighborhood—the five Central Asian countries—shared with China.
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