Oct 19,2020 Open Forum

Kazakhstan in Sino-Russian Relations: Cooperation and Competition between the EEU and BRI

On the sidelines of the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting in Moscow on September 12, 2020, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, issued a joint statement hailing the Sino-Russian “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.”1 While containing a boilerplate restatement of the two parties’ commitment to a multipolar world […]

Michael Clarke Dana Rice

"Belt and Road" Initiative , Commonwealth of Independent States , Eurasian Economic Community , Eurasian Economic Union , Shanghai Cooperation Organization , Xinjiang

Feb 10,2017 Open Forum

Xinjiang and the Trans-nationalization of Uyghur Terrorism: Cracks in the “New Silk Road”?

President Xi Jinping’s ambitious “One Belt, One Road” strategy has magnified Chinese concern for the security of its long restive northwestern province, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Xinjiang, as Owen Lattimore argued, throughout much of recorded history constituted (along with Tibet and Mongolia) the “marginal Inner Asian zone” of Chinese expansion.1 With the region’s […]

Michael Clarke

9/11 , Afghanistan , Al Qaeda , Central Asia , counterterrorism , critical theory , East Turkestan Islamic Movement , energy , globalization , Iraq

Apr 09,2015 Special Forum

Kazakhstan’s Multi-vector Foreign Policy: Diminishing Returns in an Era of Great Power “Pivots”?

Since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia in 2011, the other most consequential powers—China, Russia, India, and Japan—have constructed their own versions of the “pivot.” Each ultimately seeks to make itself central to the reordering of strategic and economic power in Asia in the twenty-first century. China’s rise has […]

Michael Clarke