Coming to terms with the complexity of external agency in central Asia

Abstract

During the 1990s, Central Asia emerged as an idiom for the uncertainty pervading the post-Cold War climate of global life. This paper therefore queries the intertwining of the region in world politics and the ways in which the dynamics of international affairs affect Central Asia. In this respect, the investigation explores the scope and connotations of the “new Central Asia” label. Its framing provides a context for the conceptual engagement with the Central Asian agency of international actors. This assessment details the perception of a regional power vacuum and the emergence of awkward statehood as key contributing factors to the construction of Central Asia as a permissive environment for external agency. Consequently, the confrontation with the proliferation of “actorness” in Central Asia accounts for the dynamics of the “new great game” and the patterns of “hegemonic fragmegration” in the region.