Central Asian Security Trends: Views from Europe and Russia

摘要

The papers collected in this volume pertain to Central Asia. Indeed, they offer us two foreign views of the strategic situation evolving there-a Russian and a French analysis. For obvious reasons: the war in Afghanistan, proximity to major global actors, large energy holdings, and for less obvious reason, i.e., the possibility that domestic instability in one or more of these states could spread to other Muslim states as we now see in the Arab revolutions of 2011, Central Asia is an increasingly important and interesting strategic region. As such, it merits sustained critical attention and analysis of the sort we are presenting here and that we have presented in the past. We also intend to continue doing so in the future. Yet for all of Central Asia's growing importance, it is a hard area to grasp analytically. To nonspecialists, it is likely to be something of a terra incognita, an unknown region, whose landmarks impart a sense of unfamiliarity, even unease, to those coming from the outside to try and understand it. Yet, at the same time, even for specialists, its reality is elusive and debates abound as to the nature of its domestic politics in both individual states and across the region. Moreover, the question of the stability of either individual states or of the region, a key question for foreign policymakers and analysts, is one of the most contested of the questions currently being debated.