GREATER SOUTH ASIA—AMERICA’S NEW REGIONAL APPROACH TO CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA:
HOW IT IS DEVELOPING AND WHAT PROMPTED IT
Atajan IAZMURADOV
Atajan Iazmuradov, Intern at the Geneva Center for Security Policy (Geneva, Switzerland)
Introduction
Late in 2005 the United States opened a new page in its relationship with Central Asia as a region. Until that time the U.S. Administration still looked at it as a region in its own right, closely connected with the CIS and consisting of five post-Soviet states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Today the U.S. State Department is practicing a new approach based on an absolutely novel idea about regional division. Central Asia and South Asia form a single region, which I will call here Greater South Asia.
In this article I have undertaken the task of tracing the evolution of this approach, starting from the moment of its official recognition. I shall also analyze the Greater Central Asia project of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, which the U.S. Administration adopted as the cornerstone of its new conception. I shall compare the projects of the U.S. Administration and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute to arrive at certain conclusions.
I shall investigate Central Asia’s new importance for the United States created by the new regional approaches. In addition, I shall analyze what prompted this approach (on which the Greater South Asia project rests) in the first place, as well as the aims the U.S. wants to……………………….