Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin

Professor Michael Rywkin

Project Director

The National Committee on American Foreign Policy’s Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin Region Project (CA Project) is dedicated to

• defining and promoting U.S. interests in and around Central Asia and more broadly the Caspian Sea Basin Region (including the post-Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), taking into consideration the geopolitical realities and the sovereign interests of the states of the region, and
• creating a track II framework to facilitate dialogue and advance such interests.

Since its founding in 2005, the CA Project has met three times with civilian and military officials in Kazakhstan as guests of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, organized a number of international track II conferences, published six brochures with policy recommendations to U.S. policymakers, and consulted a number of times with U.S. policymakers in Washington, D.C.  In January 2006, the CA Project organized an international conference on behalf of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National Security Series for civilian and military policy experts —  “Security and Stability in Central Asia.”  In May 2009, the CA Project co-hosted with the Brookings Institution Energy Security Initiative an international conference in Washington, D.C. devoted to the geopolitical environment and pipeline security of the Caspian Sea Basin Region, and energy security for the United States and the European Union —“Strategic Assessment of the Caspian Sea Basin Region.” In October 2009, the CA Project met with experts on China-Russia relations from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) to discuss Russian, U.S. and Chinese strategic interests in Central Asia and relations with Russia. In November 2010 the Project held an international Roundtable Conference at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. – “Central Asia: Strategic Context Twenty Years After Independence.”

The November 2010 roundtable conference brought together present and former officials and policy experts from the U.S., Russia, China, and Central Asia to take a fresh look at U.S., Russian and Chinese strategic interests in the region and the challenges confronting the respective Central Asian nations twenty years after independence. The objective of the roundtable conference was to inform the foreign policy debate through the conference report with analyses, conclusions and policy recommendations emerging from the off-the –record, not-for-attribution discussions.

The CA Project’s future work will continue to facilitate mutual understanding between the United States and the post-Soviet independent states of the Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin region by providing a forum for open but confidential discussions of points of interest and contention that will benefit from being aired and considered in a track II forum as a precursor or supplement to official state-level discussions.