The Growing Eurasian Strategic Geopolitical Alliance: Security Cooperation Between China, Russia And The Four Former Soviet States

China, Russia and the four former Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan andUzbekistan have been able to set up and develop a major Eurasian strategic geopolitical alliance ofsecurity and stability in the Central Asian region and parts of the wider Eurasia. While the post-SovietCentral Asia is often defined as a peripheral sub-region of the system of international relations, the regionitself has undoubtedly become an area of strategic geopolitical importance to all major global actorsincluding Russia, the PRC, the US, the EU and the wider Muslim World. It’s economic, in particularenergy, potentials are still being discovered. In the security dimension, the region’s significance in termsof stability in the wider Eurasia is also becoming increasingly obvious, particularly in the context of the2014withdrawal of the US and coalition forces from Afghanistan as well as the recent call by PresidentBarack Obama for “pivoting” or rebalancing of America’s geostrategy from the southwest Asia to theAsia-Pacific region. The general theme of this research is the growing Eurasian strategic geopoliticalalliance which currently consists of China, Russia and the four former Soviet Central Asian states. Themain research question that is being posed by the investigator is the nature and the scope of this strategicsecurity relationship, as well as the principal reasons for its original establishment on the formal structuralbasis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The investigator is examining the main elements anddynamics of this strategic security relationship based on an analysis of various government documentsand inter-state agreements that have been reached between the participating countries via the frameworkof the SCO and its structural predecessor, the Shanghai Five. To fully comprehend the nature of thiscontinuously growing strategic geopolitical structure, the author also provides a comprehensivegeopolitical assessment of the current situation in the region and the global system as a whole, and anessential theoretical examination of the growing strategic relationship, both of which are necessary for anin-depth exploration of the principal security dynamics and elements in the current security relationshipsbetween the rapidly growing China, internationally resurgent Russia and the four former Soviet CentralAsian states.