41. Hydrocarbon Energy Complexes Central Eurasian Keystone Triangles
- Author:
- Robert M. Cutler
- Publication Date:
- 04-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Baku Dialogues
- Institution:
- ADA University
- Abstract:
- The editorial statement of Baku Dialogues posits a certain geographic definition of what is called the “Silk Road Region,” namely “the geographic space looking west past Anatolia to the warm seas beyond; north across the Caspian towards the Great Plain and the Great Steppe; east to the peaks of the Altai and the arid sands of the Taklamakan; and south towards the Hindu Kush and the Indus valley, looping down around in the direction of the Persian Gulf and across the Fertile Crescent.” When I served on the Executive Board of the Central Eurasian Studies Society 20 years ago, its website provided a lengthy but useful geographic definition of “Central Eurasia.” This definition included “Turkic, Mongolian, Iranian, Caucasian, Tibetan, and other peoples in a broad area that geographically extends from the Black Sea region, the Crimea, and the Caucasus in the west, through the Middle Volga region, Central Asia and Afghanistan, and on to Siberia, Mongolia, and Tibet in the east.” To clarify the term “Black Sea region,” which appears in that definition, I adopt the European Union’s characterization of that region as stretching from Romania and Bulgaria, through northern Turkey and on to Georgia, but including only a thin coastal strip some 20‑60 kilometers wide within the EU itself, including the Danube delta. From that definition, it would follow that the Silk Road Region is largely embedded in Central Eurasia. The name “Central Eurasia” was sometimes used in the 1990s as a shorthand for the 15 former Soviet republics together (Russia included), but this usage has faded away. The collapse of the Soviet Union did not assure the eventual geoeconomic consolidation of Central Eurasia, but the conditions for that consolidation have now been established. This has occurred thanks to the confluence of international financial and industrial interest in the region’s energy resources, the political will of the United States (the only remaining superpower), and the freedom and rapidity of networked information exchanges made possible by the internet.
- Topic:
- International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, Regionalism, and Silk Road
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Asia