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Provides a sophisticated account of both the internal dynamics and external influences in the evolution of Islam in the region
The Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) countries are at an important juncture in their economic transition. Following significant economic progress during the 2000s, recent external shocks have revealed the underlying vulnerabilities of the current growth model. Lower commodity prices, weaker remittances, and slower growth in key trading partners reduced CCA growth, weakened external and fiscal balances, and raised public debt. the financial sector was also hit hard by large foreign exchange losses. while commodity prices have recovered somewhat since late 2014, to boost its economic potential, the region needs to find new growth drivers, diversify away from natural resources, remittances, and public spending, and generate much stronger private sector-led activity.
This edited collection examines the politics of semi-presidential countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Semi-presidentialism is the situation where there is both a directly elected fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet that are collectively responsible for the legislature. There are four countries with a semi-presidential constitution in this region - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. The authors introduce the concept of semi-presidentialism, place the countries in a general post-Soviet context, and compare them with Kazakhstan. They investigate the relationship between semi-presidentialism in the formal constitution and the verticality of power in reality, explore the extent to which semi-presidentialism has been responsible for the relative performance of democracy in each country, and chart the relationship within the executive both between the president, prime minister and ministers, and between the executive and the legislature.
This introduction to Central Asia and its relationship with Russia helps restore Central Asia to the general narrative of Russian and world history.
[Includes 12 maps and 4 tables] In recent years, the U.S. Army has paid increasing attention to the conduct of unconventional warfare. However, the base of historical experience available for study has been largely American and overwhelmingly Western. In Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, Dr. Robert F. Baumann makes a significant contribution to the expansion of that base with a well-researched analysis of four important episodes from the Russian-Soviet experience with unconventional wars. Primarily employing Russian sources, including important archival documents only recently declassified and made available to Western scholars, Dr. Baumann provides an insightful look at the Russian conquest of the Caucasian mountaineers (1801-59), the subjugation of Central Asia (1839-81), the reconquest of Central Asia by the Red Army (1918-33), and the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89). The history of these wars—especially as it relates to the battle tactics, force structure, and strategy employed in them—offers important new perspectives on elements of continuity and change in combat over two centuries. This is the first study to provide an in-depth examination of the evolution of the Russian and Soviet unconventional experience on the predominantly Muslim southern periphery of the former empire. There, the Russians encountered fierce resistance by peoples whose cultures and views of war differed sharply from their own. Consequently, this Leavenworth Paper addresses not only issues germane to combat but to a wide spectrum of civic and propaganda operations as well.
"In July 2007, the European Union initiated a fundamentally new approach to the countries of Central Asia. The launch of the EU Strategy for Central Asia signals a qualitative shift in the Union's relations with a region of the world that is of growing importance as a supplier of energy, is geographically situated in a politically sensitive area - between China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan and the south Caucasus - and contains some of the most authoritarian political regimes in the world. In this volume, leading specialists from Europe, the United States and Central Asia explore the key challenges facing the European Union as it seeks to balance its policies between enhancing the Union's energy, business and security interests in the region while strengthening social justice, democratisation efforts and the protection of human rights. With chapters devoted to the Union's bilateral relations with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and to the vital issues of security and democratisation, 'Engaging Central Asia' provides the first comprehensive analysis of the EU's strategic initiative in a part of the world that is fast emerging as one of the key regions of the 21st century."--BOOK JACKET.
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 adopted to advance this goal have proven counter-productive. They propose that Western governments work with the regional states rather than on or against them; and that instead of focusing directly on political systems, policies should focus on developing the quality of governance and help build institutions that will be building blocks of rule of law and democracy in the long term. The authors also argue that Western leaders have largely failed to grasp the significance of this region, relegated it to a subordinate status and thus damaging western interests. The development of sovereign, economically strong, and effectively self-governing states in the Caucasus and Central Asia is an important goal in its own right; the book stresses the importance of a region where the development and preservation of secular statehood could become a model for the entire Muslim world.
The Cold War shaped the world we live in today - its politics, economics, and military affairs. This book shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the last century created the foundations for most of the key conflicts we see today, including the War on Terror. It focuses on how the Third World policies of the two twentieth-century superpowers - the United States and the Soviet Union - gave rise to resentments and resistance that in the end helped topple one superpower and still seriously challenge the other. Ranging from China to Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua, it provides a truly global perspective on the Cold War. And by exploring both the development of interventionist ideologies and the revolutionary movements that confronted interventions, the book links the past with the present in ways that no other major work on the Cold War era has succeeded in doing.
The classic study of resistance to Tsarist Russian colonialism, the genocide that followed, and its connection to the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1916, Tzar Nicholas II began drafting Russian subjects across Central Asia to fight in World War I. By summer, the widespread resistance of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks turned into an outright revolt. The Russian Imperial Army killed approximately 270,000 of these people, while tens of thousands more died in their attempt to escape into China. Suppressed during the Soviet Era and nearly lost to history, knowledge of this horrific incident is remembered thanks to Edward Dennis Sokol’s pioneering Revolt of 1916 in Russian Central Asia. This wide-ranging and exhaustively researched book explores the Tsarist policies that led to Russian encroachment against the land and rights of the indigenous Central Asian people. It describes the corruption that permeated Russian colonial rule and argues that the uprising was no mere draft riot, but a revolt against Tsarist colonialism in all its dimensions: economic, political, religious, and national. Sokol’s masterpiece also traces the chain reaction between the uprising, the collapse of Tsarism, and the Bolshevik Revolution.