The Regional Security Puzzle Around Afghanistan Bordering Practices In Central Asia And Beyond

Western military presence wanes in Afghanistan and a transformed security environment challenges borders and stability in Central Asia. This book examines how the tensions relating to the reorganization of external military presence interact with regional states’ ambitions and challenge the borders already contested by numerous dividing lines. It studies a complex political landscape across which radical Islam connected with international terrorism is feared to spread as the international mission initiated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks winds down.

Western military presence wanes in Afghanistan and a transformed security environment challenges borders and stability in Central Asia. This book examines how the tensions relating to the reorganization of external military presence interact with regional states’ ambitions and challenge the borders already contested by numerous dividing lines. It studies a complex political landscape across which radical Islam connected with international terrorism is feared to spread as the international mission initiated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks winds down.

A victim not just of its geography but also of the political and strategic choices of its neighbours, Afghanistan's security predicament is analysed in a book that is particularly relevant to recent developments in Central Asia

In the light of mass migration, the rise of nationalism and the resurgence of global terrorism, this timely volume brings the debate on border protection, security and control to the centre stage of international relations research. Rather than analysing borders as mere lines of territorial demarcation in a geopolitical sense, it sheds new light on their changing role in defining and negotiating identity, authority, security, and social and economic differences. Bringing together innovative and interdisciplinary perspectives, the book examines the nexus of authority, society, technology and culture, while also providing in-depth analyses of current international conflicts. Regional case studies comprise the Ukraine crisis, Nagorno-Karabakh, the emergence of new territorial entities such as ISIS, and maritime disputes in the South China Sea, as well as the contestation and re-construction of borders in the context of transnational movements. Bringing together theoretical, empirical and conceptual contributions by international scholars, this Yearbook of the Austrian Institute for International Affairs offers novel perspectives on hotly debated issues in contemporary politics, and will be of interest to researchers, graduate students and political decision makers alike.

This book investigates how borders in former Soviet Union territories have evolved and shifted in the thirty years since the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to fifteen independent states and numerous de facto states; but this process of rebordering is not finished, and social, economic, infrastructural, cultural and political networks and spaces continue to develop. This book explores the intersection between these geopolitical shifts and the individual lived experience, drawing on cases from across border regions in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Throughout, the book introduces and frames the case studies with well-informed theoretical, conceptual and methodological overviews that situate them within border studies in general and post-Soviet border spaces in particular. Overall, the book demonstrates that like a kaleidoscope, the dynamic elements in these newly evolved border regions are similar yet strikingly different in their juxtapositions, with the appearance of new configurations often dependent on changing geopolitical constellations. This timely guide to the post-Soviet world thirty years after the Cold War will be of interest to researchers across border studies, politics, geography, social anthropology, history, Eastern European Studies, Central Asian Studies, and Caucasian Studies.

This book joins the discussion on foreign aid triggered by the rise of multiplicity of emerging donors in international development and explores the transformation of Kazakhstan from a recipient country to a development aid provider. Drawing on fieldwork in Nur-Sultan and Almaty (Kazakhstan) between 2016 and 2019, this research evaluates the philosophy and core features of Kazakhstan’s chosen development aid model and explains the factors that account for the construction of aid patterns of Kazakh donorship. This book will be of interest to scholars of Central Asia and the emerging politics of Eurasia as well as scholars of politics and aid.

The Making of Eurasia investigates the multi-layered spectrum of China and Russia's Eurasian policies towards each other, ranging from competition to cooperation, as well as the role of regional actors in between. The book examines the impact of and responses to the dynamic Sino-Russian interaction in the wake of China's Belt and Road initiative, focusing on the selected case studies of Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan, but also on inter-regional implications across the Eurasian space. With China's imprint on inter-regional politics and ambition to make a distinctive Chinese contribution to 'globalization' and Russia's vision of a 'Greater Eurasia' in which Moscow stakes out a place for itself as an indispensable power, other regional actors adopt policies that respond to and co-shape the resulting centrifugal forces. Meanwhile, power shifts are underway on a global plane, as the normative divide between Russia and the West has widened, and as the Sino-American rivalry is intensifying. The book therefore also sheds light on the effects of Eurasian power shifts on global governance in a context where global 'leadership' is contested, and in which the US and Europe are re-defining their relationship not only towards a self-confident China but also towards each other. As such, this study will provide valuable insight for students and scholars of Eurasian Asia Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, and International Relations at large.