Turkmenistan’s longstanding neutrality has kept it out of Russian regional security arrangements like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which has constrained the level of influence Moscow could have in this notoriously insular Central Asian republic. But now, China... MORE

Perhaps not surprisingly, the development of railways in Central Asia and of shipping routes and pipelines across the Caspian Sea are routinely characterized as elements of geopolitical competition among major outside powers, including Russia, China, Turkey, the United States, Iran and India (see EDM, February... MORE

For the last several years, China has made use of its own private military companies (PMC) to guard Chinese industrial sites and transportation networks across Central Asia that it views as essential to its broader “One Belt, One Road” (more recently known as the Belt... MORE

With the ongoing withdrawal of the United States’ military forces and the consequent weakening of the Afghan government, the Taliban now controls much of the territory of Afghanistan and most of its northern borders, posing a threat to its three immediate northern neighbors (Tajikistan, Turkmenistan... MORE

Although Russia’s Caspian Flotilla remains the dominant naval force on the Caspian, it is not the only one that matters anymore. All four other littoral states—Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan—have been building up their own naval presences, particularly since various intra-regional disputes over access to... MORE

Following decades of wrangling and negotiations, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, in Aktau, on August 12, 2018. According to the domestic laws of the five littoral states of the Caspian Sea, the text... MORE

In the 1930s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin considered building a canal between the Black and Caspian seas because the Volga­–Don Canal lacked the depth to handle large-capacity ships. But World War II forced him to suspend and then abandon that dream. Now, President Vladimir Putin... MORE

High-ranking officials from Iran and Tajikistan made a total of three visits to Dushanbe and Tehran, respectively, in less than two months, a significant sign that after years of frosty relations, diplomatic ties are finally improving (Khovar, February 23, March 29, April 5). Even more... MORE

Three decades after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Kremlinology remains a useful tool for evaluating political developments in many former Soviet republics—perhaps nowhere more so than Turkmenistan, where opacity is such that even Russian specialists find it difficult to discern the reality behind political... MORE

Geopolitical competition in the Caspian Sea region over oil and natural gas fields, pipelines carrying these hydrocarbons across that body of water, and security measures intended to protect both have attracted the bulk of the attention of the littoral states as well as outside powers... MORE