Uzbekistan's New Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity under New Leadership
America, EU, Japan: Time to Reunite Afghanistan with Central Asia
By S. Frederick Starr
With respect to Afghanistan, the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea and the major international financial institutions are all caught in a time warp. Dating back a century and a half, this distortion today impedes Afghanistan’s development as a normal country. No less, it helps isolate the other countries of Central Asia from a nearby major market, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, and pushes the other countries of Central Asia into a one-sided relationship with their former imperial overlord, Russia. It’s time to correct this long-standing mistake.
Time to Re-Engage
Article, The American Interest, March 17, 2017
S. Frederick Starr, Time to Re-Engage
Whipsawed by years of foreign policy activism and then by general retreat, the United States is at risk of losing an opportunity to cement hard-won gains in Central Asia/Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: What Does the Future Hold?
CACI FORUM
Afghanistan: What Does the Future Hold?
Thursday, 3 Nov. 2016, from 5 to 7 p.m.
(reception with Georgian wine at 5 p.m.; main program at 5:30)
This CACI forum presents three of its Afghan colleagues, all of them recipients of the Rumsfeld Fellowship. With one a senior official in President Ghani's office, the second the head of Afghanistan's largest TV network, and the third from the Afghan private sector with military background, they are well positioned to speak about their country's future, its security, its politics, and the views of its citizens.
Speakers:
Mr. Zafar Hashemi
Deputy Spokesman to the President of Afghanistan
Mr. Lotfullah Najafizada
Award-winning journalist and Director of TOLOnews (Afghanistan’s top 24/7 news and current affairs television channel)
Mr. Sami Sadat
CEO, Blue Sea Logistics Company
Military and Security Expert
Moderated by S. Frederick Starr, Chairman, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute
A video recording of this forum can now be viewed on the SAIS Events YouTube channel.
Rome Building Auditorium
SAIS - Johns Hopkins University
1619 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20036
2016 CAMCA Regional Forum Held in Tbilisi, Georgia, June 17-19
2016 CAMCA Regional Forum to be Held in Tbilisi, Georgia, June 17th-19th
Regional meeting fostering an exchange of ideas on key issues throughout the Greater Central Asia region
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 30, 2016
Washington, D.C. — The 2016 CAMCA (Central Asia-Mongolia-Caucasus-Afghanistan) Regional Forum will be held on June 17th-19th in Tbilisi, Georgia, hosted by the Rumsfeld Foundation in partnership with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Over a three-day meeting, international and regional leaders across all sectors will convene to explore key issues, opportunities and challenges facing the CAMCA region.
The 3rd annual CAMCA Regional Forum will discuss ongoing developments in the region as well as outlooks on broader global trends. The Forum will consist of plenary sessions, keynote addresses and a variety of panels on topics including recent geopolitical and economic developments, intraregional trade and transport, business and investment opportunities in the region, regional security issues and much more.
The CAMCA Regional Forum is a non-political and non-partisan entity established to promote region-wide discussions on means of advancing economic growth and development in Greater Central Asia (Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). It promotes this goal by fostering dialogue and interaction among rising young leaders from various sectors in the 10 countries of the region, as well as with international leaders and stakeholders.
The CAMCA Regional Forum has evolved out of the Rumsfeld Fellowship Program at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, which has been bringing talented leaders from the region to Washington, D.C. since 2008. As of June 2016, over 145 professionals will have completed the Fellowship.
For more information about the Rumsfeld Foundation, please visit www.rumsfeldfoundation.org or the Foundation’s Facebook page. For more information on the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, SAIS, please visit www.silkroadstudies.org.
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Media Contacts:
Ms. Sarah ConantExecutive Director, Rumsfeld Foundation
Phone: (202) 944-1304
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.Mr. David Soumbadze
Fellowship Program Director, SAIS
Phone: (301) 257-5753
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
News
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Read CACI Chairman S. Frederick Starr's recent interview on the resurgence of Imperial Russia with The American Purpose
Why Russians Support the War: Jeffrey Gedmin interviews S. Frederick Starr on the resurgence of Imperial Russia.
The American Purpose, May 23, 2023
Jeffrey Gedmin: Do we have a Putin problem or a Russia problem today?
S. Frederick Starr: We have a Putin problem because we have a Russia problem. Bluntly, the mass of Russians are passive and easily manipulated—down to the moment they aren’t. Two decades ago they made a deal with Vladimir Putin, as they have done with many of his predecessors: You give us a basic income, prospects for a better future, and a country we can take pride in, and we will give you a free hand. This is the same formula for autocracy that prevailed in Soviet times, and, before that, under the czars. The difference is that this time Russia’s leader—Putin—and his entourage have adopted a bizarre and dangerous ideology, “Eurasianism,” that empowers them to expand Russian power at will over the entire former territory of the USSR and even beyond. It is a grand and awful vision that puffs up ruler and ruled alike.
What do most Russians think of this deal? It leaves them bereft of the normal rights of citizenship but free from its day-to-day responsibilities. So instead of debating, voting, and demonstrating, Russians store up their frustrations and then release them in elemental, often destructive, and usually futile acts of rebellion. This “Russia problem” leaves the prospect of change in Russia today in the hands of alienated members of Putin’s immediate entourage, many of whom share his vision of Russia’s destiny and are anyway subject to Putin’s ample levers for control. Thus, our “Putin problem” arises from our “Russia problem.”
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CACI director Svante Cornell's interviewed on the 'John Batchelor Show' podcast regarding Turkey's 2023 presidential election
Listen to CACI director Svante Cornell's recent interview on the 'John Batchelor Show' podcast regarding Turkey's 2023 presidential election. Click here!
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New Article Series on Changing Geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus
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CACI Initiative on Religion and the Secular State in Central Asia and the Caucasus
In 2016, the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program launched an initiative on documenting the interrelationship of religion and the secular state in the region. This initiative departed from the fact that little systematic reserch had been undertaken on the subject thus far. While there was and remains much commentary and criticism of religious policy in the region, there was no comprehensive analysis available on the interrelationship of religion and the state in any regional state, let alone the region as a whole. The result of this initiative has been the publication of six Silk Road Papers studying the matter in regional states, with more to come. In addition, work is ongoing on a volume putting the regional situation in the context of the Muslim world as a whole.
Case Studies
Each study below can be freely downloaded in PDF format.
Azerbaijan's Formula: Secular Governance and Civil Nationhood
By Svante E. Cornell, Halil Karaveli, and Boris Ajeganov
November 2016
Religion and the Secular State in Kazakhstan
By Svante E. Cornell, S. Frederick Starr and Julian Tucker
April 2018
Religion and the Secular State in Uzbekistan
Svante E. Cornell and Jacob Zenn
June 2018
Religion and the Secular State in Kyrgyzstan
Johan Engvall
June 2020
Religion and the Secular State in Turkmenistan
Victoria Clement
June 2020Articles and Analyses
Svante E. Cornell, "Religion and the State in Central Asia," in Ilan Berman, ed., Wars of Ideas: Theology, Interpretation and Power in the Muslim World, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.
Svante E. Cornell, "Central Asia: Where Did Islamic Radicalization Go?" in Religion, Conflict and Stability in the Former Soviet Union, eds. Katya Migacheva and Bryan Frederick, Arlington, VA: RAND Corporation, 2018.