Key Players and Regional Dynamics in Eurasia: The Return of the 'Great Game Maria Raquel Freire, Roger E. Kanet

This volume explores Russia's re-emergence as a major actor in Central Asia and the Caucasus - a re-emergence which is limited by the involvement and influence of external state and non-state actors, including China, the USA and foreign energy companies.

The contributors to this edited volume explore Russia's re-emergence as a major actor in Central Asia and the Caucasus. This re-emergence is limited by the involvement and influence of external state and non-state actors such as China, the United States, India, foreign energy companies, and international organizations, including the CIS and CSTO, NATO, the OSCE and the SCO. The primary focus is on Russia as the main state actor in the relationships and on the possibilities and limits of its initiatives in the face of the processes of multi-level and multi-actor cooperation and competition in the region. The central issues of regionalism – as a constructed reality in Eurasia – and great power rivalry, with the dynamics that underlie this dialectic relationship, are analyzed, making this study a contribution to the examination of Russian interests in and policy toward the region and the competition that it now faces with other countries and non-state actors.