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The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) embodies Russia’s latest attempt to restore interconnections among former Soviet countries through economic means rather than military might. The literature on the EAEU views the initiative as a geopolitical tool, a post-imperial escamotage, a platform to enhance reforms, or a counterhegemonic strategy. This article wishes to understand the EAEU as an example of Carl Schmitt’s theorizations, especially in relation to the concept of Great Space. The EAEU resembles the Schmittian Great Space in four main respects: the existence of a regional hegemon with spheres of interest beyond its fixed borders, the expression of an “imperial” community of cultural and historical affinity, the overcome of the rigid Westphalian state model expressed by the jus publicum Europeaum in favor of a large space, and the manifestation of the nomos of the Earth, that is a telluric civilization within the Schmittian contraposition between Land and Sea. The application of the Schmittian Great Space paradigm to the EAEU—in tandem with the proliferation of other regional integration initiatives and organizations—confirms the ongoing global shift from rigid Westphalian nation-states to highly integrated political-economic blocs based on civilizational identity in the frame of a multipolar world.

As manifest challenger of the United States (US)-led international order, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has inaugurated a revisionist strategy that encompasses a multifaceted spectrum of initiatives, including an ambitious naval military build-up. History has shown that revisionist and challenging powers tend to defy the established order through arm races. US Admiral Mahan and German Admiral Tirpitz theorized two different approaches to naval strategy, the former focusing on global maritime hegemony and the latter on regional counterbalance based on risk theory. This article attempts at explaining the puzzle of China's naval buildup through the lenses of geopolitics, adding a geopolitical dimension to the current debate. It suggests that the PRC's naval military development does not follow a Mahanian global maritime strategy aimed at challenging the US primacy worldwide, but rather a Tirpitzian regional approach focused on counterbalancing the US presence within the scope of China's sea power projection, that is, the Pacific region. To substantiate this hypothesis, the study compares diachronically contemporary Chinese naval arm race with Wilhelmine Germany's High Seas Fleet. The findings underscore that, in maritime terms, China's revisionism vis-à-vis the US somewhat resembles that of Imperial Germany vis-à-vis Imperial Britain, both aiming at regional counterbalance and anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) tactics rather than global maritime counterhegemony. Although Chinese sea power is still far from posing a serious threat to that of the US and its allies, an unrestrained continuation of Beijing's naval buildup could encourage arms races and direct confrontation due to regional security dilemmas.

Since the 1868 Meiji Restoration, Japan transformed itself from a closed late-feudal society into a modernizing state increasingly integrated in the global economic and political system. Despite the reactionary interwar expansionist momentum inspired by chauvinistic Tennoism, after 1945 Japan pursued a new path towards economic modernization becoming in less than fifty years an avantgarde of post-modernity and one of the world’s wealthiest societies. This modernization, which came along with technological development and investment, deeply affected Japanese urban conception. While public and private initiative have been mobilized towards the achievement of outstanding economic growth and massive increases in standards of living, the benefits of economic growth have been undermined by persistent urban concerns like high land prices, low housing standards, and environmental pollution. However, in the future the major factor that is expected to affect Japanese urban development is demographic change, with a drop to half the current level of almost 130 million people by the end of the 21st century. The rapid ageing of Japanese society, low demographic expectations, swift decline in the workforce, and restrictions of foreign immigration are factors that project a slowdown of human urbanization in the future, with a decline in the need for new housing and other urban investment. At the same time, technological development and urban robotization in the frame of “smart city” programs will forge a new Japanese urban identity hinging on robotics. In this frame, this article wishes to investigate the impact of technological development on future Japanese urbanization asking whether robotics will have the capacity to tackle Japanese demographic decline without leading towards substantial social changes or whether it will transform Japanese cities into dystopic post-human artifacts. The creation of futuristic Japanese hyper-smart cities could boost structural vulnerabilities originating from an overdependence on cybernetic capacities and Artificial Intelligence.