Eurasia's Shifting Geopolitical Tectonic Plates
Global Perspective, Local Theaters
By (author) Alexandros Petersen Foreword by S. Frederick Starr
Publication date:
18 July 2017Length of book:
258 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
240x157mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781498525503
This anthology of articles, short studies, and interviews by Alexandros Petersen was written over the span of ten years, starting in 2004. Yet they are even more relevant today in their prescient analysis. Petersen insightfully addressed the implications of the West withdrawing its engagement from the Caucasus and Central Asia, the expansion of the Chinese influence, and Russia’s strategic interests.
The collection is organized along four main topics: (1) Eurasia and a changing transatlantic world: the world politics of shifting frontiers in the post-Soviet world; (2) Energy geopolitics in the Caspian and beyond, with its crucial implications for European energy security; (3) the Black Sea world, covering the dynamics of Russia, Turkey, and the South Caucasus, including the role of NATO and frozen conflicts in the region; (4) the new silk roads: China’s inroads in Central Asia, which is often overlooked in the West but will be critical for the geopolitical balance of powers.
The collection is organized along four main topics: (1) Eurasia and a changing transatlantic world: the world politics of shifting frontiers in the post-Soviet world; (2) Energy geopolitics in the Caspian and beyond, with its crucial implications for European energy security; (3) the Black Sea world, covering the dynamics of Russia, Turkey, and the South Caucasus, including the role of NATO and frozen conflicts in the region; (4) the new silk roads: China’s inroads in Central Asia, which is often overlooked in the West but will be critical for the geopolitical balance of powers.
EURASIA’S SHIFTING GEOPOLITICAL TECTONIC PLATES IS A COLLECTION of writings on geopolitics and energy politics in Eurasia by the American academic and writer Alexandros Petersen, who died tragically on 17 January 2014 in a Taliban attack in Kabul. The book, published in the ‘Contemporary Central Asia’ series at Lexington Books, conveys an impression of Petersen’s ability to combine perceptive analysis with empirical insight. Given the paucity of analyses on and lack of Western strategies towards Central Asia in particular, his writings represent a much needed and welcome contribution. Most chapters are very brief and written with a journalistic flair. Petersen’s explicit aim was to provide succinct policy analyses rather than lengthy academic treatises. The brevity of the chapters should therefore not come as a surprise, as this is a collection to celebrate his scholarship as a prolific writer and passionate traveller rather than a sustained book-length analysis of geopolitics in Eurasia.