Journal of International Studies

Central Asia is in a period of transition. Many tenets of Soviet infrastructure and culture have expired and rather than renew these precedents, the countries are 

By Bakyt Asanov and Farangis Najibullah 

President Xi Jinping's latest, highly ambitious tour through the Central Asian republics [in September] took regional political circles by surprise. From the points of view of Central Asian capitals, it seems clear that Beijing is marching through Moscow's turf in Central Asia, forging close ties by offering more money and less meddling compared with the Kremlin's often troublesome integration schemes. However, the cordial ties between Beijing and Central Asian regimes stand in sharp contrast to popular attitudes to China.  Local media, opposition groups and popular opinion are often skeptical of China's rising presence in Central Asia. While there is variation among the region's post-Soviet republics, certain themes reappear - concern about the inflow of Chinese labor, disputes about land and territory and skepticism about the management of commercial deals.  The people of these countries experience opportunities merged with anxiety and antagonism. Rea...

Much has been made of  China’s re-engagement with Central Asia . While others have commented on what China wants in the region, or why it is elevating its relations with the Central Asian republics, perhaps there is a more important question: Why now? Why has China made Central Asia a priority in 2013, and not last year, or the year before? China has always sought new access to resources, or to new trading partners, this is not new. China had previously agreed with Turkmenistan   to build a natural gas pipeline to China in 2006. I suggest there are three reasons why China has chosen to deepen engagement with its Central Asian neighbors at this time: the selection of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) by a consortium of European energy companies; the 2014 NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan; and to increase competition with leverage against Russia. For some time now, Europe has sought Caspian Sea and Central Asian natural gas as a means to diversify away from Russia as its m...

Earlier in October, the U.S. Department of Defense  announced its intent  to transfer the Transit Center at Manas (TCM) International Airport in Kyrgyzstan to the Government of Kyrgyzstan by July 2014. Normally, any such high-level action regarding a military base would raise eyebrows across the United States, but the move went unnoticed by most. Central Asia, after all, hasn’t been the United States’ main strategic theater.  In a feature  for  The Diplomat , I discussed China’s pivot to Central Asia, guided by a healthy balance of strategic vision and geopolitical savvy. The U.S., on the contrary, has decided that Central Asia simply isn’t worth the trouble. The transfer of TCM is but a symptom of this broader trend. The nexus of U.S. Central Asia policy has been driven by its entrenchment in Afghanistan since 2001. With withdrawal on the horizon in 2014, the U.S. faces a critical choice regarding its involvement in Central Asia. Earlier this year, the...

The Curious Case of Eugene Gourevitch

Ilham Aliyev has won reelection as president of Azerbaijan for a third term. The result was never in doubt. Nor was the fact that election observers would criticize the conduct of the poll—the OSCE monitoring team promptly released a  statement describing a number of serious defects. Now it gets more interesting. As Aliyev begins his eleventh year as president of Azerbaijan, the huge shadow of his father and predecessor inevitably begins to recede and this is the moment for him to set a new political agenda for the country—if he wants too.  As I have argued recently , a changing geopolitical environment means that he needs to do so or risk facing a whole new set of problems. Reading the runes in post-election Baku, there is already one important piece of news to ponder. This is that under a presidential pardon former Economic Development Minister  Farhad Aliyev has been released from jail , along with his brother Rafik. Farhad Aliyev was jailed in 2005. Formally...

Amid an unprecedented flurry of energy deals, Beijing strengthens alliances on Russia’s backdoor but struggles to keep Xinjiang as happy. Even by Chinese standards, the scale of September's natural gas deal with Turkmenistan was significant. Standing side by side in the oasis city of Mary in the Karakum Desert, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Turkmen counterpart Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov marked the completion of the first phase of the world’s second-largest gas field with warm smiles and yet further cooperation. A new deal signed on the same day will see  Turkmenistan deliver 65 billion cubic meters of natural gas  through the world’s longest pipeline by 2016, an increase of 25 billion cubic meters. The Galkynysh field is “another fine example of bilateral energy cooperation for mutual benefits,” Xi was quoted as  saying  in the state-run  China Daily . In an unprecedented tour also locking in energy deals with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajik...

In his recent op-ed in The New York Times, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s objected to the idea of American “exceptionalism.” This is ironic because the nation whose state tradition is based on a claim to exceptionalism is not the U.S. but Russia.  In his speech calling for a military strike against Syria, President Obama said that America was exceptional because it is not indifferent to human suffering. This is quite different from making a claim to inherent superiority. Under both tsars and communists, however, Russia insisted that it had a right to remake the world because of the monopoly on truth contained in its ruling doctrine. In the post-communist era, Russia no longer has an ideology. But it glorifies its past and frequently acts as if the rights of others do not exist. The key to Russia’s sense of exceptionalism is a belief in the quasi-divine status of the Russian state. It is this notion that is responsible for the absence of the rule of law in Russia and the...

The World Bank has joined the Asian Development Bank in cutting its growth forecasts for emerging East Asia. However, the region is still expected to be the world’s fastest growing in 2013 , according to the Washington-based institution. In its East Asia Pacific Economic Update released in Singapore on Monday, the global lender cut its growth forecasts for “developing East Asia” to 7.1 percent in 2013 and 7.2 percent in 2014, down from its April forecasts of 7.8 percent and 7.6 percent respectively. The forecasts were higher than the Asian Development Bank, which expects  regional growth of just 6 percent in 2013 and 6.2 percent the following year  due to a slowdown in China and India. “East Asia Pacific continues to be the engine driving the global economy, contributing 40 percent of the world’s GDP growth – more than any other region. With overall global growth accelerating, now is the time for developing economies to make structural and policy reforms to sust...