The geopolitical environment surrounding Central Asia and the Caucasus has changed dramatically over the past decade, with important implications for American and European interests. Regional and great powers have accorded the region ever greater attention, and the regional states themselves have developed a greater agency in responding to the geopolitical challenges confronting them. European, and in particular American, perceptions of the region have not kept up with these changes and ar...

For decades, the Greater Middle East has been a leading challenge to American foreign policy. This vast region - ranging from North Africa in the west to Afghanistan in the east, and from the borders of Central Asia down to the Horn of Africa in the south - has been a cauldron of turmoil that has affected not just American interests, but generated threats to the American homeland.The multitude of challenges in this region has led to some confusion. What should be the focus of U.S. ...

The outcome of the Second Karabakh War is a watershed event in the modern history of Eurasia. It represents the moment of conception of a new South Caucasus, the only part of the world that borders on Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Unsurprisingly, external powers like the U.S., China, the EU, India, and the GCC states are all taking greater interest in its future. Written for scholars and designed for classroom use,AFTER KARABAKH: War, Peace, and the Forging of a New Caucasus

Across the Muslim world, religion and politics have become increasingly mixed in the past century, with devastating consequences. But there are signs that the ascendancy of political Islam may be coming to an end. In this context, the experience of Central Asia and Azerbaijan as Muslim-majority states that insist on secular laws, courts and education is a much-overlooked model that is bound to attract greater interest. THE NEW SECULARISM is the first study of the Central Asian mod...

This book argues that American and European policies toward Central Asia and the Caucasus suffer from both conceptual and structural impediments. It traces the framework of Western policies to the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which resulted in the stovepiping of relations into political, economic, and democracy categories – and in often uncoordinated or contradictory policies. While the authors embrace the goal of promoting human rights and democracy, they argue that the antagonistic methods a...

Uzbekistan, long considered the center of Central Asia, has the region’s largest population and borders every other regional state including Afghanistan. For the first 25 years of its independence, it adopted a cautious, defensive policy that emphasized sovereignty and treated regional efforts at cooperation with skepticism. But after taking over as President in autumn 2016, Shavkat Mirziyoyev launched a breathtaking series of reform initiatives. His slogan – “it is high time the governmen...

In the summer of 2008, a conflict that appeared to have begun in the breakaway Georgian territory of South Ossetia rapidly escalated to become the most significant crisis in European security in a decade. The implications of the Russian-Georgian war will be understood differently depending on one's narrative of what transpired and perspective on the broader context. This book is designed to present the facts about the events of August 2008 along with comprehensive coverage of the backgroun...

Azerbaijan, a small post-Soviet republic located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, has outsized importance becaus of its strategic location at the corssroads of Europe and Asia, its oil resources, and

This book frames the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh in the context of European and international security. It is the first book to focus on the politics of the conflict rather than the dispute itself. Since their emergence twenty years ago, this and other “frozen conflicts” of Eurasia have been affected by transformations in European security, and many ways absorbed into an ever fiercer geopolitical struggle for influence. The wars in Georgia and Ukraine brought greate...

The struggle between Russia and Great Britain over Central Asia in the nineteenth century was the original "great game." But in the past quarter century, a new "great game" has emerged, pitting America against a newly aggressive Russia and a resource-hungry China, all struggling for influence over the same region, now one of the most volatile areas in the world: the long border region stretching from Iran through Pakistan to Kashmir. In Great Games, Local Rules, Alexander Cooley, ...

The Balkans is often described as a grim backwater, a "no man's land of world politics" in the words of a post-World War II study "foredoomed to conflict springing from heterogeneity." The stereotype is false, but it has been distressingly influential in shaping perceptions of the Balkan conflict and its origin. By encouraging pessimism about prospects for recovery, it may also make it more difficult to sustain commitments to post conflict peace building. This book seeks to refute simplist...

The Russian annexation of Crimea was one of the great strategic shocks of the past twenty-five years. For many in the West, Moscow's actions in early 2014 marked the end of illusions about cooperation, and the return to geopolitical and ideological confrontation. Russia, for so long a peripheral presence, had become the central actor in a new global drama. In this groundbreaking book, renowned scholar Bobo Lo analyzes the broader context of the crisis by examining the interplay between Rus...