Azerbaijan’s economic growth and diversification have played a pivotal role in enhancing stability and security across the South Caucasus and Central Asia regions since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In recent years, its principal partner in this project has been Kazakhstan. Initially focused on their oil and gas reserves, both countries have been shifting […]

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The Trans-Caspian International Trade Route (TITR), a trade corridor running from China through Central Asia and the South Caucasus to Europe, has received increased attention since Western countries introduced sanctions against Russia in early 2022 for its war of aggression against Ukraine. Its route goes from China through Kazakhstan, across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan […]

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The United Nations Special Program for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA) recently held its 25th-anniversary meeting, not in Central Asia but in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku. This program, which has generally passed under the radar for most of its life, was founded in 1998 for the purpose of enhancing cooperation among the Central Asian countries […]

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Winter is coming on, and as I predicted here two months ago, not even a memorandum of understanding (MoU) or any agreement in principle was reached this autumn between the EU and Turkmenistan, for Europe to receive any natural gas in any form from the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. This failure has come […]

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Construction of a road from Azerbaijan to its exclave Nakhchivan through Iranian territory has begun. This road will plausibly stand in the place of the “Zangezur Corridor” road that would have run from Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan through the southern Armenian province of Syunik. Armenia had committed itself, in Point 9 of the November 2020 Trilateral […]

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The Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline is back on the drawing board, but it is unlikely to provide any gas to Europe. After the failure of the second attempt to realize the project in the late 2010s – due in part to the domestic political influence exercised by the inherited Soviet-era monopoly Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation […]

The post More Caspian Sea gas for Europe back in the cards appeared first on Asia Times.

In my July 31 article in Asia Times, I discussed Central Asian regional dynamics, with a focus on the opposition between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In that context, I mentioned Kazakhstan’s efforts to halt smuggling of dual-use goods into Russia and pointed out that as a result, “a clandestine corridor has been established, passing through Kyrgyzstan […]

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The EU and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have recognized the strategic potential of the Trans-Caspian International Trade Route (TITR) to revolutionize Eurasian trade. In particular, they have identified a “Central Trans-Caspian Network” (CTCN), running through southern Kazakhstan, as the most sustainable of three container-transit options for linking Central Asia and Europe. The […]

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A new conflict is appearing in Central Asia that puts Kazakhstan under pressure from Kyrgyzstan, which has in effect been engaging in a strategic partnership with Russia since 1991. Ever since Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, this collaboration has deepened in one particular respect, involving attempts to circumvent the […]

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After the Cold War ended, the South Caucasus, Caspian Sea basin, and Central Asia became areas of practical policy focus for Western geopolitical strategists, who recognized their importance for international affairs going beyond the region’s rich energy resources. However, a hiatus of this strategic engagement set in at the end of the first decade of […]

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The role of Iran’s ethnic minorities in the ongoing rebellion against the oppressive Tehran regime has been absent from Western and international public discourse, but that is changing. It is changing because the Iranian state’s war against its own people, coupled with its leadership’s decision to assist the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, has […]

The post Iran’s ethnic minorities begin to take center stage appeared first on Asia Times.

Continuing tectonic changes in macro-regional Asian geopolitics have been launched by the combination of Azerbaijan’s victory in the Second Karabakh War two years ago and Russia’s approaching defeat in its war of aggression in Ukraine. Those changes reach far beyond the South Caucasus and Eastern European geopolitical theaters. They range, indeed, from Southwest Asia (including […]

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Arrangements have been agreed for another meeting between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, in Brussels on Wednesday, through the good offices of Charles Michel, the president of the European Council. This meeting could be a make-or-break encounter for the long-run future of Russian influence in the South Caucasus and, by extension, the Caspian Sea […]

The post Central Asian trade intensifies work on South Caucasus corridor appeared first on Asia Times.

Not long ago I wrote here at Asia Times that Azerbaijan had become a new “vector” for the foreign policies of the Central Asia countries. Now the European Union has signed a memorandum of understanding “on a Strategic Partnership in the Field of Energy” with Azerbaijan. The meeting had been scheduled for some time by […]

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In the early 1990s, it was Kazakhstan that originated the foreign-policy strategy now called “multi-vectorialism” that many of the independent states of Eurasia, formerly Soviet republics, adopted in subsequent years. Decree 853 issued by the president of Kazakhstan at the time, Nursultan Nazarbayev, laid out the country’s priorities. Now, under the conditions of international sanctions […]

The post Central Asia’s new foreign-policy ‘vector’ is Azerbaijan appeared first on Asia Times.

Timing is everything, and sometimes you just get things right. That must be the feeling in Azerbaijan these days, where the expansion of the free-trade zone at Alat is on schedule to be completed in July. Alat is a township 70 kilometers south of the capital, where the Port of Baku has already been renovated […]

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