Suchergebnisse

This article attempts to examine several aspects of the geohistorical principles and specific features of the evolution of the military-political systems in the Muslim East and the Christian West. It traces the historical roots from which these systems stemmed in the Middle Ages and in Modern and Recent History. It analyzes the experience of the many-century military-political standoff between the West and the East in the context of the dynamics of the geopolitical changes in the correlation of forces on the world arena over the past one-and-a-half millennia.

The author investigates the main international-geopolitical and geoeconomic issues of the first decade of the 21st century related to the Caspian region. He analyzes the positions of the major geopolitical players, that is, the world and regional powers involved in the region (Russia, the United States, the European Union, Turkey, Iran, and China). He makes an attempt to look into the region's geopolitical and geoeconomic future and surmise the impact that regional developments might have on the geopolitical situation in the Greater Middle East.

The author has chosen a geohistorical approach for looking at the main events which were part of the Great Game in the Caucasus and the Caspian on the eve of and during World War II. He describes such key elements as the secret maneuvering in the Caucasus between the wars; the British-French military-strategic plans in the Caucasus during the Phony War of 1939-1940; Germany's attempts to make a "geostrategic breakthrough" in the Caucasus in 1941-1943, as well as the "cold" continuation of geostrategic rivalry between the Soviet Union and the West in the Caucasus and the Caspian immediately after World War II.

The author offers an overview of the acute geopolitical rivalry that went on in the Caucasian-Caspian Region for over a hundred years starting with the early decades of the 18th century until, in the first quarter of the 19th century, the Russian Empire finally gained military-political hegemony over the Central Eurasian geostrategic core.