Central Asia Eurasian Geopol

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Each of the five Central Asian nations are in the throes of historic domestic change. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have both embarked upon a path of significant political economic reforms. Kyrgyzstan has experienced three different uprisings since 2005. Tajikistan is at the cusp of a generational change in leadership, and Turkmenistan has a new president who succeeded his father and seeks to end his country’s long isolation. These transformations are taking place at a time of tremendous geopolitical churn across their broader Eurasian environs. To the north, the future of former liege Russia is mired in uncertainty, especially in the light of the ongoing war in Ukraine. On its eastern flank, China is aggressively trying to pull the region into its geoeconomic orbit. From the westerly direction Turkey is trying to draw the region toward a pan- Turkic union. And toward the south extremist Islamism emanating from a post- American Taliban-ruled Afghanistan threatens the Muslim-majority Central Asian nations. This course is designed to provide graduate students as well as those at the senior undergraduate level a deep and broad understanding of an extremely strategic region, which even after three decades since its emergence from underneath the rubble of the former Soviet Union remains disconnected from the west. Students will be exposed to its rich history going back to the medieval period but will spend the bulk of their time learning about the contemporary moment to get a sense of the future of the region that the father of geopolitics, Halford Mackinder, described as the pivot area of the world.