Central Asia

In its 2017 report, the USCIRF effectively champions the right of Islamist extremists to operate in several Muslim-majority countries, Iranian mullahs to spread...

Throughout Central Asia, political momentum is gathering for deeper cooperation, engagement, and coordination.

This Caspian Sea contains some of the world’s largest fossil energy reserves, yet the undefined rules of the political game have kept them off limits.

While the world focuses on China’s aggression in the seas to its east, China’s leaders are looking west with their "One Belt, One Road" strategy. If successful, the...

Uzbekistani President Islam Karimov may have won yet another fraudulent election, but challenges to his rule abound.

Why do some weak states survive while others collapse? For Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, at least, the secret lies in the state's ability to manage corruption.

Recently, China, Russia, and the United States have started to compete for influence in Central Asia. Unlike Afghanistan in the last Great Game, however, the...

The United States may have reset its Russia policy, but the U.S. approach to the other states in the region is in dire need of a conceptual revolution.

Over the years, both Russia and the United States have tried to court Kyrgyzstan. Did their strategic competition help push President Kurmanbek Bakiyev from office?...

U.S. engagement with Afghanistan has brought all of Central Asia to a turning point, but flagging interest and uncoordinated policies risk undermining recent gains....

The September 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath have spurred a renewed U.S. interest in Central Asia. Despite official rhetoric, America is likely to remain...

To wage its war in Afghanistan, the Bush administration needed Uzbekistan's help -- and promised a lot to get it. But Washington must not let this short-term...

The Caspian basin holds enormous oil and gas deposits that could play a critical role in the world's economic future. But getting them out of the ground and onto...

An old political theory, "Eurasianism" is fast gaining converts in Russia's corridors of power. Its vision of a new Russian-Asian alliance could start World War III...

Central Asia is central to Eurasian security despite its seeming remoteness. Blessed with natural riches, it nevertheless has two wars in progress, ethnic and...

Today's wars are easily started and then fought without perceptible restraint. The world has entered a period of post-heroic warfare.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Great Britain was obsessed by the fear that one of the other European powers would take advantage of the political decay of...