Uzbekistan: A New Model for Reform in the Muslim World?
Uzbekistan: A New Model for Reform in the Muslim World?
Dramatic and important changes are taking place in Central Asia. For more than a year the region’s historic core and geopolitical focal point has been immersed in a whirlwind of reform without precedent in the region. At a time when one-man rule has been reinforced in China and Russia, when the rule of law is in abeyance in countries as diverse as South Africa and Venezuela, and when most Muslim majority societies appear to be receding into a new authoritarianism informed by religious ideology, Uzbekistan has instituted reforms that are ambitious in aim and extensive in scope.
It is far too early to say how it will all come out, or even how far it will go. But there is little doubt that that the current reforms are all organized around solid commitment to the rule of law, the rights of citizens, elective governance, an open market economy, religious tolerance, cordial relations with the great powers without sacrificing sovereignty, and a new embrace of the Central Asian region itself as an actor on the world state. It’s time for the world to take stock of this startling development.
The EU and Central Asia: Expanding Economic Cooperation, Trade, and Investment
The EU and Central Asia: Expanding Economic Cooperation, Trade, and Investment
Svante E. Cornell and Johan Engvall
Since the independence of the Central Asian states, this landlocked region has taken time to reconnect with the world, including Europe. Twenty-five years ago, many underestimated the diverse challenges – infrastructural, economic, political – that impeded the region’s trade and connectivity with the rest of the world. Yet as trade statistics show, much has been accomplished in a quarter century. The EU may not be a major security actor in Central Asia, but its importance as an economic partner is universally acknowledged. While energy relations were a key driver of cooperation in the early days of independence, the emergence of Central Asia as a corridor for land-based trade between Europe and Asia is in the process of overtaking energy and establishing itself as the main vector of economic relations.
The European Union’s Political and Security Engagement with Central Asia: How to Move Forward
The European Union’s Political and Security Engagement with Central Asia: How to Move Forward
Fabienne Bossuyt
Despite an ambitious set of policy initiatives for Central Asia, the EU is punching below its weight in a region where Russia and China are far more influential. Ten years after the EU launched a strategy for Central Asia, the EU is still facing substantial challenges in implementing its strategy successfully. In the meantime, the dynamics in and around the region have changed and these new realities are not reflected in the 2007 strategy. After providing a brief overview of EU-Central Asia relations, this article identifies a set of nine policy recommendations with respect to what should be the main elements, tools and approaches of a revised EU strategy for Central Asia.
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Joint Center Publications
Article S. Frederick Starr, "Why Central Asia Counts", Middle East Insights, November 6, 2017
Article Mamuka Tsereteli, “Russian Aggression in the Black Sea Cannot Go Unanswered” The Hill, September 11, 2017
Article Bilahari Kausikan, Fred Starr, and Yang Cheng, “Asia’s Game of Thrones, Central Asia: All Together Now.” The American Interest, June 16,2017
Article Svante E. Cornell “The Raucous Caucasus” The American Interest, May 2, 2017
Resource Page "Resources on Terrorism and Radical Islamism in Central Asia", Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, April 11, 2017.
Silk Road Monograph Nicklas Norling, Party Problems and Factionalism in Soviet Uzbekistan: Evidence from the Communist Party Archives, March 2017.
Oped Svante E. Cornell, "Russia: An Enabler of Jihad?", W. Martens Center for European Studies, January 16, 2017.
Book Svante E. Cornell, ed., The International Politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict: The Original 'Frozen Conflict' and European Security, Palgrave, 2017.
Article Svante E. Cornell, The fallacy of ‘compartmentalisation’: the West and Russia from Ukraine to Syria, European View, Volume 15, Issue 1, June 2016.
Silk Road Paper Shirin Akiner, Kyrgyzstan 2010: Conflict and Context, July 2016.
Silk Road Paper John C. K. Daly, Rush to Judgment: Western Media and the 2005 Andijan Violence, May 2016.
Silk Road Paper Jeffry Hartman, The May 2005 Andijan Uprising: What We Know, May 2016.
Silk Road Paper Johanna Popjanevski, Retribution and the Rule of Law: The Politics of Justice in Georgia, June 2015.
Book S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell, eds., ·Putin's Grand Strategy: The Eurasian Union and its Discontents, Joint Center Monograph, September 2014.