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the world stage. In the West, at the doorstep of reborn Russia, the European Union continued its laborious construction of its institutions, all the more needed as the number of member-countries was growing. Moreover, after ten years of the twenty-first century, the world stage has shifted its focus to important actors, namely Brazil, India and China, as their presence is influential in global institutions, like the World Trade Organisation, and in world gatherings such as recently in Copenhagen. In such a broad context, this section presents two approaches related to the post-Soviet new republics of Central Asia. Farkhad Tolipov, Senior Advisor of the Institute for Central Asian and Caucasian Studies (Luleå, Sweden), in the first, convincingly analyses the intricacies of Russian policies in Central Asia. In what Zbigniew Brzeziński popularised as “the great chess board”, Russia has to choose between three “moves”: “retreat, retention, or return”. Looking further West, the second contribution, offered by Sébastien Peyrouse, Senior Research Fellow with the Central Asia and Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program (Washington and Stockholm), presents the European policies in Central Asia: would some belated but new strategies be able to overcome old complexities?
The Editor |
