Arctic Geopolitics: Future Conflict beyond the Caspian
Russia is not a littoral nation of just one great body of water in the Caspian. It also has its entire northern expanse along...
Confronting the Double-Edged Sword: Turkmenistan’s Collective Security Dilemma
In early July, naval delegations from Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Kazakhstan met in St. Petersburg to discuss the idea of a collective security system...
Kazakhstan Steering through Troubled Waters
Earlier this year, the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan announced a new campaign called “Invest in Kazakhstan,” which was designed to attract foreign investors....
The Russia-OPEC-America Nexus: Reimagining the Great Oil Game
The geopolitical implication to the sudden fall in oil prices has had broad-reaching ramifications for a number of very powerful countries. Two of those...
Exposing Geopolitical Moral Relativism
With all eyes on Iran, the human rights abuses that continue in the repressive country of Turkmenistan have taken a back seat. Despite pressure...
Soft power as a threat to a hard power
2012 was fruitful for Russian legislators and painful for the NGOs. That year marked the series of laws threatening the fragile civil society in...
Kazakhstan & WTO: End of an Odyssey or New Leap Forward?
Kazakhstan applied to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in January of 1996. Twenty long years later (July 27, 2015), President Nazarbayev signed the...
The Rebirth of the Patriarch of Moscow
The Orthodox Church and the Christian tradition have always assumed a role of primary importance in Russian history and tradition. The...
Kazakhstan: United Nations Security Council 2017-2018
Kazakhstan, in an attempt to build its reputation as mediator and the leading country in Central Asia, is seeking a position on the 15-member...
“Pyrrhic Sovereignty” – The Treasure of the Tengiz
History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes - or so goes the adage. This is at play in the Caspian today as...