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Latest Articles about Central Asia
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Kazakhstan’s Pro-Russian Course May Alienate Ukraine
On March 25, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev completed his three-day visit to the Netherlands, where he met with the Dutch authorities and attended the World Nuclear Summit in The Hague. While nuclear issues took center stage at this international gathering of heads of state and... MORE
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Developments in Ukraine Will Likely Force Tajikistan Closer to Moscow
During a March 8 meeting in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Tajikistani Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Aslov drew comparisons between the EuroMaidan protests and Tajikistan’s bloody civil war (Ozodagon, March 8). The comments closely mirrored those given four days earlier by Igor Lyakin-Frolov, Russia’s... MORE
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Putin’s Crimea Speech: A Manifesto of Greater-Russia Irredentism
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on the incorporation of Crimea into Russia (kremlin.ru, March 18; see EDM, March 19) aimed far beyond Crimea in scope and ambition. Explicitly, Putin called into question the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state. Implicitly, he laid a basis for challenging... MORE
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Kazakhstan Responds to Ukraine Crisis
The crisis in Ukraine has presented many challenges for Kazakhstan’s foreign policy—unwelcome comparisons between the domestic situations in both countries, growing tensions between Russia and the West, and disruptions to Kazakhstani-backed Eurasian integration schemes. In the past two weeks, moreover, the Kazakhstani government has struggled... MORE
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Crisis in Crimea: Will Kazakhstan Be Next?
Moscow’s military intervention in Crimea and the peninsula’s upcoming March 16 referendum on whether to leave Ukraine and join Russia has caused muted official reaction in Central Asia. Nonetheless, Russia’s actions in Ukraine is particularly closely followed across the region. And the Kremlin’s justification for... MORE
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Foreign Policy Implications of Mongolian Crony Democracy
Though considered a healthy—albeit developing—democracy (https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/105158; https://www.santmaral.mn/en/publications), Mongolia has in recent years become dominated by the competing interests of its political and business factions, whose collective actions undermine the country’s democratization trends as well as complicate Ulaanbaatar’s foreign policy. For now, Mongolia resides in a... MORE
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Will ‘Dostumistan’ Be Established Near Afghanistan’s Border With Uzbekistan?
In January 2014, the chairman of the National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan party, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a well-known politician and leader of ethnic Uzbeks in Afghanistan, made unofficial visits to Uzbekistan’s capital of Tashkent, the Kazakhstani capital of Astana, and Almaty—Kazakhstan’s largest city. According... MORE
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Terrorist Attack in Kunming Reveals Complex Relationship with International Jihad
On March 1, at least six men and two women equipped with daggers stormed a train station in Kunming, the capital of China’s southwestern Yunnan Province, and murdered 29 people. Within two days of the attack, China released the photos and names of four suspects... MORE
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China and the Silk Road: Marching Westward
On November 29, 2013, an international cargo train Chang’an (“Lasting Peace”) departed from Xi’an, the capital city of Shaanxi province in central China, and traveled westward toward Central Asia. On December 9, after a journey of more than 5,000 kilometers, the 49-car train arrived in... MORE