[elcid1970]

Excellent article. Central Asia has been all but invisible to the West for more than a century because of Russian/Soviet domination. We need to pay attention to what's happening east of the Caspian and (what's left of) the Aral Sea.

I was deployed to Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan in 2003-04. At the time it looked like the beginning of a friendship between us and the Uzbeks. I forgot that Karimov is a Stalinist dictator. Not as bad as in Turkmenistan (that place might as well be North Korea). Anyway, we're gone and the Russians are back in. Too bad.

[MarMema]

It does indeed seem that many tenets of neo-Eurasianism -- including an insistence on Russia's central role in Eurasia -- have become elements of state policy during Putin's presidency. Putin's foreign policy has clearly adopted a geopolitical approach, in sharp contrast to the ideologically based Soviet foreign policies and Tsarist-era messianic imperialism. Putin has consistently advocated trans-Eurasian transport projects, which are mainstays of Dugin's neo-Eurasianism. Dugin has written that Russia can only over take the Atlantic powers economically by developing its own trans-Eurasian infrastructure to counter their control of the world's waterways.

Also if you google Alexander Dugin and come up with his Wikipedia article, it talks about France and Germany being part of a stretegic line, and Iran being an important partner. All fits in perfectly with what Putin has been doing in the last few years.