HYPER-TERRORISM VS. HYPER-POWER: COMING TO TERMS WITH ASYMMETRY
By Maria Sultan (12/5/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Asymmetry of firepower has always been both a goal in itself and a method of war for powerful states, who have felt the desire to have a leading edge over their adversaries’ capacity to fight. However, the logic of the use of asymmetry of power in itself understandably leads to an asymmetric response by the weaker party. The most obvious examples of different actors turning to fight such asymmetric wars, from the American perspective, is the Viet Cong, which in the early stages of the conflict was repeatedly defeated by overwhelming US power, but turned it into an eventual success due to its use of asymmetric methods of war, making use of terrain, local population, ambushes, i.
ECOLOGICAL SECURITY: AN URGENT NECESSITY FOR CENTRAL ASIA
By Jyldyz Sydygalieva (12/5/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: During the Soviet era, the Kyrgyz Republic was a major source of uranium for both military and industrial purposes. There are approximately 130 sites in Kyrgyzstan containing about 620 million cubic meters of waste products that were buried during the Soviet time, mostly from the mining industry. About half of these sites contain waste from nuclear production - an industry that most Kyrgyz citizens were not aware had existed within their territory because it was kept a secret by the Soviet authorities.
GOVERNMENT CRISIS IN KAZAKHSTAN: WARM-UP FOR THE SUCCESSION TO NAZARBAEV?
By Robert M. Cutler (12/5/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: After Kazakhstan unwillingly obtained its independence upon the disintegration of the Soviet regime, Nazarbaev tacitly proclaimed war against the bloated state bureaucracy he inherited, which also constituted a potential opposition power base. After the first post-Soviet parliament was elected in 1994, on the basis of the country's first post-Soviet constitution, lobbies and alliances began to emerge between parliamentary groupings on the one hand, and the lower and middle ranks of the ministerial structures on the other. Nazarbaev engineered the parliament's dissolution in 1994 when, on the basis of an accusation of electoral fraud by an anti-Nazarbaev candidate in a single electoral district, the Constitutional Court ruled the entire parliament to be illegal.
AFGHANISTAN-BASED INTERNATIONAL DRUG-TRAFFICKING: A CONTINUED THREAT
By Hooman Peimani (5/8/2002 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: The opium and heroin production in Afghanistan and Afghanistan-based international drug-trafficking are a byproduct of over two decades of chaos, lawlessness, and poverty caused and reinforced by the civil war that lasted until the fall of the Taliban, which removed a major obstacle to ending the Afghan civil war, but did not eliminate the four major factors contributing to the operation of the drug \"industry\": rampant poverty, lack of a viable economy, ethnic rivalries and the absence of a strong central government. The first two factors have motivated many Afghan peasants to substitute non-profitable traditional farming (e.g.Visit also
Staff Publications
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, U.S. Policy in Central Asia through Central Asian Eyes, May 2023.
Analysis Svante E. Cornell, "Promise and Peril in the Caucasus," AFPC Insights, March 30, 2023.
Oped S. Frederick Starr, Putin's War In Ukraine and the Crimean War), 19fourtyfive, January 2, 2023
Oped S. Frederick Starr, Russia Needs Its Own Charles de Gaulle, Foreign Policy, July 21, 2022.
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, Rethinking Greater Central Asia: American and Western Stakes in the Region and How to Advance Them, June 2022
Oped Svante E. Cornell & Albert Barro, With referendum, Kazakh President pushes for reforms, Euractiv, June 3, 2022.
Oped Svante E. Cornell Russia's Southern Neighbors Take a Stand, The Hill, May 6, 2022.
Silk Road Paper Johan Engvall, Between Bandits and Bureaucrats: 30 Years of Parliamentary Development in Kyrgyzstan, January 2022.
Oped Svante E. Cornell, No, The War in Ukraine is not about NATO, The Hill, March 9, 2022.
Analysis Svante E. Cornell, Kazakhstan’s Crisis Calls for a Central Asia Policy Reboot, The National Interest, January 34, 2022.
Book S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell, Strong and Unique: Three Decades of U.S.-Kazakhstan Partnership, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, December 2021.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell, S. Frederick Starr & Albert Barro, Political and Economic Reforms in Kazakhstan Under President Tokayev, November 2021.