Past Event

The Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies is pleased to present:

The Changing Security Landscape of Central Asia:

A View from Kazakhstan

With Dr. Aigerim Shilibekova

Event Poster

Twenty-four years after the collapse of the bipolar world, it is obvious that the process of geopolitical transformation of the entire post-Soviet space hasn’t finished yet. In this context, the security landscape of Central Asia has been changing and developing new features strongly influenced by national, regional and global dynamics. The US’s Global War on terror at the borders of the region and potential consequences of the ISAF troops’ withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan in the end of 2014, rapidly emerging China with its ambiguous involvement in the regional economies, recent Russia’s radical shift in its foreign policy are only few of those new challenges faced by regional states of Central Asia during the last decade. Re-assessment of the changing security landscape as viewed from Kazakhstan will be presented through the identity-institutions-interests framework.

Dr. Aigerim Shilibekova is the founding director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at the Gumilyov Eurasian National University in Astana and Editor-in-Chief of “Sardar”, the military strategic journal published by the Center for Military and Strategic Studies under the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Her research interests include international organizations, regional security and politics of Central Asia and the Middle East. In 2010 Aigerim has been awarded a Rumsfeld Fellowship for young leaders from Central Asia, the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Mongolia sponsored by the Rumsfeld Foundation at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. In the frames of the Fellowship Aigerim met high-level representatives of the U.S. government and civil society (media, think tanks, business, NGOs, advocacy groups, etc.) as well as attended Congressional hearings in different Congressional committees. In 2013-2014 Aigerim joined the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University as a Visiting Scholar, where she is doing her research on new security threats in Central Asia. She is fluent in Kazakh, Russian, English, Turkish and French.