Description
Firdavs Kobilov
Abstract
Interdependence and interconnectedness of the states in security issues, economic development and prosperity, transport connectivity and logistics, challenges of environment and climate have emerged the new wave of the academic and empirical studies on regional studies and regionalism. Central Asia is one of the interesting case studies for further examining the regionalism and regional cooperation in the academic mainstream among the scholars. This region is located in the crossroads of the West and East, the North and South, in the heart of Eurasia. Despite the existence of many literatures on regional cooperation of Central Asian states, there is a gap in the literature that focuses on the further enhancement of a regional cooperation among the five states after the recent transition of the power in these states. The main research question is how is there any further strengthening of the regional cooperation among five CA states after coming new leaders to the power. I argue that transition power and coming new leaders in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan could play vital role in further regional cooperation due to the several reasons. Firstly, new leaders could be able to find compromise in long-standing issues such as border dispute, recent Uzbek and Kyrgyz negotiations are striking example. Secondly, despite their multivectoral foreign policy two important states Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan started to focus on regional issues, Uzbekistan even declared that its foreign policy priority region is Central Asia. The literature review method can be theoretical and academic basis for this study. I will conduct the narrative and critical analysis that allows me to review: what relevant studies have already been done; how it familiarises the piece; and how the work suits the research; and, finally, a more detailed examination of the literature, to compare and evaluate several perspectives. The content analysis will implement a review of the official document of the speeches of the officials about the regional cooperation among CA states, the declarations of the officials, their interviews, and Joint communiqué in social media or the webpage of both sides. I would like to stress the importance of the theoretical approach that focuses on the impact of the new leaders that could play a vital role in the formulation of foreign policy toward regional cooperation enhancement. Therefore, this study proposes an analysis of the impacts of the career pathway of leaders in the foreign policy of the states.
Keywords: Central Asia, regionalism, regional cooperation, interdependence, transport connectivity, border issue, transition, foreign policy, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan.
Paper Contribution Status: Full draft
