The central objective of this edited volume is to help unlock a set of intriguing puzzles relating to changing power dynamics in Eurasia, a region that is critically important in the changing international security landscape.

The central objective of this edited volume is to help unlock a set of intriguing puzzles relating to changing power dynamics in Eurasia, a region that is critically important in the changing international security landscape.

This volume studies the contemporary dynamics of conflict and cooperation within Eurasia with reference to interdependencies, partnerships and contestations on regional security, energy, democratic transition, and trade. Its key concern, in a broader sense, is, therefore, to understand the various outcomes of post-Soviet regional transformation and the intra- and inter-regional integrative or dismantling interaction making the regional countries hopeful or pessimistic about the future of their immediate and extended neighbourhood within contemporary Eurasia. The contributions here unfold the contemporary strategies of individual states with regards to cooperation, on the one hand, and the unavoidable conflicts in both bilateral relations and on a regional level, on the other. The chapters examine, with reference to central Eurasia, the root causes and the transitive character of conflict and cooperation, regional security dynamics and competing security complexes, and rising powers’ increasing involvement in the equation favouring cooperation via trade. As such, this book provides a better understanding of both the issues and the challenges the wider Eurasian region is currently experiencing.

Eurasia has long been characterized by intense competition among populations and among States. The collapse of the Soviet Union constituted a critical juncture in the region’s course, since informal and formal norms subsided, giving rise to a hardly regulated socio-political environment, where survival and security considerations ranked atop. In this context, populations, first and foremost, sought to have their existence guaranteed within nation-states. While in most cases that transition was accomplished without major impediments, in the cases of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, major challenges have been encountered, leaving their mark deep in the post-soviet course of the newly independent republics. Moldova has been rattled by the conflict in Transdniestria, Ukraine by the conflict in Crimea, Georgia by the conflict in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Azerbaijan by the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. In fact, these conflicts have been classified as ‘frozen conflicts’, given their unsettled nature and the ‘smoldering fire’ between opposing populations within the respective republics. This intense competition, however, has not been constrained only to the domestic level and only to the issue of ‘frozen conflicts’. Eurasia’s energy prospects have also been the cause of a constant power struggle among the States of the region. With the Caspian Sea to constitute a rich in natural resources hub, a clash of interests has taken place among the littoral States. Moreover, this competition has acquired a much broader geopolitical dimension, extending to Eurasia’s two ends, the European Union and China. As a result, Eurasia’s underbelly has become an area where the maximization of power figures as the best guarantee of survival and security in a fully unregulated environment. Taken together, ‘frozen conflicts’ (domestic level) and ‘energy politics’ (international level) stand out as (the) two main features of Eurasia, both unfolding in comparable conditions. Therefore, the book presents them as a two-level game, aiming at offering better substantiated explanations that draw on the very fundamentals of political science, and at building a ‘bridge of communication’ between the two levels that allows for well-informed and widely applicable policy implications.

It seems that every single issue in Eurasia and the world becomes a battleground among the great powers. This book's initiative is to categorize the battlegrounds as three aspects: national/regional/international conflicts, institutions/alliances, and projects.

This anthology brings together studies of post-colonial, post-Cold War, Central Eurasia. This part of the world is in transition to independent statehood, nation building and the release of market forces. The objective of the work is to better comprehend the process of state-nation building.

By combining perspectives from experts in domestic politics, regional politics, and specialists in international security, this edited volume focuses on the central role of energy production and supply in the Russian-Western completion across Eurasia.