By Robert M. Cutler

November 7th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

According to Azerbaijan’s energy minister Natig Aliev, his country and Kazakhstan will construct an oil pipeline under the Caspian Sea to provide additional necessary routes for export of Kazakhstani oil from the offshore supergiant Kashagan field, which has finally entered commercial production after years of delay. The two sides appear unbothered by the sometimes vexatious and still unsettled matter of the Caspian Sea’s legal regime, which has for nearly two decades prevented Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan from constructing a natural gas pipeline under the sea between their two countries.

By Rafis Abazov and Zhumatay Salimov

October 4th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

The government of Kazakhstan has been among the pioneers in Central Asia in promoting the development of technoparks, perceived as vehicles for attracting investment to hi-tech industries, stimulating technology transfer and ultimately contributing to the building of a knowledge-intensive economy. The government also envisions that technoparks will help the national economy move away from dependency on commodities exports and establish competitive knowledge-intensive industries. Yet, the effectiveness of these multi-billion tenge investments has been hotly debated among experts in the country. Some argue that developing technoparks and innovation clusters is the only route towards an internationally competitive national economy. Others claim that the policy has not been effective, and that technoparks have failed to produce significant outcomes even after a decade of active investment.

By Robert M. Cutler

August 28th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

On June 25, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China met in Beijing, immediately after spending two days together in Tashkent at a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The two countries’ industrial cooperation is dominated by the energy sector, where the several dozen agreements that were signed in Beijing confirmed that in bilateral economic and trade relations China is the agenda-maker and Russia is the agenda-taker. This relationship is now extending itself to the geoeconomic competition between the two in Central Asia and East Central Eurasia generally, as well as into Greater South Asia at a slower pace.

By Eduard Abrahamyan

July 24th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

On June 30, Armenia’s Parliament ratified the Russia-Armenia United Regional System of Air Defense in the Caucasian Region, thereby moving it to the operational stage. The agreement was preliminarily signed in in Moscow by Armenia’s and Russia’s defense ministers in December 2015, on the basis of analogous accords with Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2009 and 2013 respectively. While the approval was accompanied with speculations on how Armenia could benefit from the accord, Moscow’s potential to exploit the agreement in its anti-Western posture has received less attention. In particular, the joint air-defense system presumably constitutes a reinforcing element of Moscow’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities in the eastern flank of the Black Sea region.

By Rafis Abazov

June 28th, 2016, The CACI Analyst

Kazakh experts have recently begun to call water the “liquid gold of the 21st century,” as all states in the Central Asian region face greater demand for water concurrent with a significant decline in water supply. The Aral Sea – which became a symbol of environmental mismanagement and environmental catastrophe at the end of the 20th century – shows that sustainable development policies can help to deal with even the most difficult water issues. Conversely, however, mismanagement and border conflicts over water might worsen the situation, leading to further political and economic tensions. The current question is whether Kazakhstan can collaborate with other Central Asian states in saving and perhaps reviving the Aral Sea.