The Middle Corridor is a multimodal transport corridor connecting China to Europe. Europe’s limited prospects are opposed to Asia which will see an increasing share of global GDP rising from about 45% today to around 58% by 2030. The republics will use the Middle Corridor to increase trade with Europe, but can’t ignore their neighbors... Read More

Azerbaijan’s late September military operation to retake the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, the self-styled “Republic of Artsakh,” caused most of the residents to flee to Armenia and the government of breakaway region to announce it will dissolve by 1 January 2024. The likely end of conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia may unlock opportunities for... Read More

America’s economic siege of Iran has been costly for Tehran’s neighbors, and now it is Pakistan’s turn to pick up the tab. On 7 August, Pakistan announced it was suspending its natural gas pipeline project in Iran under threat of U.S. sanctions, and issued a Force Majeure and Excusing Event notice to Iran under the... Read More

In April 2023, John Thornton, Director of the Global Leadership Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing and former President and Co-Chief Operating Officer of the Goldman Sachs Group, disclosed that in 2013 China’s president Xi Jinping told then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that American participation in the One Belt, One Road development project was... Read More

Instead of being “Being Fustest with the Mostest” in Central Asia, an area of intense interest to China and Russia, the U.S. and Europe may be “too little, too late.” The dwindling relevance of Washington and Brussels to Central Asia was on display when Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosted the leaders of the five Central... Read More