By Farkhod Tolipov

December 15th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

Uzbekistan’s and Tajikistan’s independence in 1991 raised the Shakespearean “To be or not to be?” question concerning the ambitious construction of a dam on the mountainous Vakhsh river in Tajikistan, which would embody the Rogun Hydro Power Station. Uzbekistan – a downstream country – has permanently and vigorously rejected and resisted the project referring to numerous risks associated with Rogun for all downstream countries. Uzbekistan’s president has been the principal political antagonist of this project. Two months after his death in September 2016, Tajikistan’s president has decided to move on with the project.

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Published in Analytical Articles

By Robert M. Cutler

November 7th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

According to Azerbaijan’s energy minister Natig Aliev, his country and Kazakhstan will construct an oil pipeline under the Caspian Sea to provide additional necessary routes for export of Kazakhstani oil from the offshore supergiant Kashagan field, which has finally entered commercial production after years of delay. The two sides appear unbothered by the sometimes vexatious and still unsettled matter of the Caspian Sea’s legal regime, which has for nearly two decades prevented Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan from constructing a natural gas pipeline under the sea between their two countries.

transcasp1

Published in Analytical Articles

By Rafis Abazov and Zhumatay Salimov

October 4th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

The government of Kazakhstan has been among the pioneers in Central Asia in promoting the development of technoparks, perceived as vehicles for attracting investment to hi-tech industries, stimulating technology transfer and ultimately contributing to the building of a knowledge-intensive economy. The government also envisions that technoparks will help the national economy move away from dependency on commodities exports and establish competitive knowledge-intensive industries. Yet, the effectiveness of these multi-billion tenge investments has been hotly debated among experts in the country. Some argue that developing technoparks and innovation clusters is the only route towards an internationally competitive national economy. Others claim that the policy has not been effective, and that technoparks have failed to produce significant outcomes even after a decade of active investment.

almaty1

Published in Analytical Articles

By Robert M. Cutler

August 28th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

On June 25, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China met in Beijing, immediately after spending two days together in Tashkent at a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The two countries’ industrial cooperation is dominated by the energy sector, where the several dozen agreements that were signed in Beijing confirmed that in bilateral economic and trade relations China is the agenda-maker and Russia is the agenda-taker. This relationship is now extending itself to the geoeconomic competition between the two in Central Asia and East Central Eurasia generally, as well as into Greater South Asia at a slower pace.

jinping-putin-5

Published in Analytical Articles

By Eduard Abrahamyan

July 24th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

On June 30, Armenia’s Parliament ratified the Russia-Armenia United Regional System of Air Defense in the Caucasian Region, thereby moving it to the operational stage. The agreement was preliminarily signed in in Moscow by Armenia’s and Russia’s defense ministers in December 2015, on the basis of analogous accords with Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2009 and 2013 respectively. While the approval was accompanied with speculations on how Armenia could benefit from the accord, Moscow’s potential to exploit the agreement in its anti-Western posture has received less attention. In particular, the joint air-defense system presumably constitutes a reinforcing element of Moscow’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities in the eastern flank of the Black Sea region.

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Published in Analytical Articles

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Staff Publications

Screen Shot 2023-05-08 at 10.32.15 AMSilk 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.

2206-StarrSilk 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.

StronguniquecoverBook 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.

The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.

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