On the brink and at the world’s edge: Western approaches to Central Asia’s international politics, 1991–2021

ABSTRACT

Western scholarship on the foreign policies of the post-Soviet Central Asian states has consistently framed the region as marginalized but ripe for Great Power influence and poised to assume a more important role in world affairs. This article explores the analytical assumptions, institutional agendas, and geopolitical drivers of scholarly and policy portrayals of Central Asia, emphasizing the key role played by the Western military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and the region’s supporting role as logistics providers and security partners. The ensuing local and regional reactions to this intensifying securitization prompted International Relations scholars to explore the limits of Western governance and the liberal international order in Central Asia and highlight the rise of new counter-ordering norms, organizations and networks. This body of work has made important contributions to the now growing literature on post-Western International Relations, but still excludes the voices of many Central Asian scholars themselves and overlooks important regional topics and new analytical approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Central Asia
• International Relations
• United States
• securitization
• liberal international order
• post-Western world

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Grady Vaughan for his research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Indeed, these four works (Allworth 1994, 2013; Olcott 1995, 1996) remain among the 12 most-cited works on the region from the 1990s.

2 Shahrani (1993) was responding to Rumer’s (1989) influential account.

3 Tellingly, for several years the most significant ODA provider to the region in the 1990s was Japan, though it remains unclear whether this engagement yielded political influence.