This thesis looks at competing influences in Central Asia since 1991. It looks at all five Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, and identifies the three main powers with competing influences as Russia, Islam and America. It aims at showing which of these three powers is the most enduring and powerful in the region according to how strong its influences are. The strengths of these influences are investigated in relation to the fields of security, politics, culture and economics. This thesis argues that Russian influences are at present the strongest amongst most strata of the Central Asian population. Russification (which falls under cultural influence) in both its linguistic and behavioural forms is a profound contributor to Russia's firm role in the region. Russia's security, economic and particularly political influences have gradually grown in strength, giving the other two powers a larger challenge. According to this work, Islam is a growing power in the region and has gained momentum primarily as a result of internal factors in the region, although regional and global Islamic forces are also looked at. Islam's cultural and political influences are particularly effective in the development of Islam as a power in the region. Central Asia's geo-strategic importance was soon realised by Washington after independence. This thesis argues that competition and not cooperation characterised the relationship between Russia and America throughout the 1990's and in particular after September 11, which led to America's increased involvement in the region. The USA's economic and security-related influences have been the strongest and most successful. Its political influences have often been seen as counter-productive by pushing different segments of the population towards the other two powers. America's cultural influences come last. This thesis has consequently provided a platform for measuring competing influences from Russia, Islam and America in Central Asia.
The article analyzes the guiding imperatives behind Russia's grand strategy in the Mideast, including both its domestic decision-making institutional idiosyncrasies and the wider geopolitical considerations at play. It discusses the evolution of Russian strategy after the so-called "Arab Spring" events and into the present day, taking care to individually analyze Moscow's most important bilateral relationships. The review begins by addressing Russia's anti-terrorist intervention in Syria, before progressing to some words about the two competing foreign policy factions present in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After outlining the key differences between the Liberal and Military-Security camps, the work then broadly explains how their rivalry fi gures into the formulation of Russia's overall grand strategy in the Mideast. Following that, it logically proceeds to examine the other bilateral relationships that are of signifi cance to Moscow, beginning with Turkey, Iraq, and Israel, and ending with Saudi Arabia and Iran. The goal of the research is to establish a very general understanding of how Russia's foreign policy is presently practiced in the Mideast, how and why it got to where it is today, and forecast on the prospects for its further development. In doing this, the article relies on empirical observations and references several under-discussed news items that have evaded wider scrutiny. It also makes use of a few academic sources in proving that the geopolitical environment in which Russia conducts its present foreign policy was largely shaped by the US' legacy of Hybrid Wars on the region, which in hindsight created fertile ground for the revolution in Russia's Mideast strategy. In summary, Russia seeks to replace the US as the Mideast countries' most preferred and trusted partner, capitalizing off of Washington's decline in regional infl uence brought about by the disastrous rise of Daesh and the controversial perceptions over the Iranian nuclear deal in order to fi ll the strategic void that's been created in America's wake, and as of the end of 2016, Moscow has been wildly successful. ; В статье анализируются важнейшие установки, определяющие стратегию России на Ближнем Востоке, включая особенности принятия решений внутри страны на институциональном уровне и более широкие геополитические аспекты. Рассматривается развитие российской стратегии после событий так называемой «Арабской весны» до настоящего времени и отдельно разбираются важнейшие двусторонние связи Москвы. Обзор начинается с анализа проводимой Россией антитеррористической операции в Сирии, затем кратко упоминаются две соперничающие фракции дипломатов в российском Министерстве иностранных дел. Отмечая основные различия между лагерями либералов и силовиков, статья в общих чертах объясняет, как их соперничество вписывается в формирование общей большой стратегии внешнеполитической деятельности России на Ближнем Востоке. Далее последовательно рассматриваются важные для Москвы двусторонние отношения, начиная с Турции, Ирака и Израиля, и заканчивая отношениями с Саудовской Аравией и Ираном. Исследование ставит целью получить общее представление о том, как Россия проводит внешнюю политику на Ближнем Востоке, как и почему эта политика оказалась в своем нынешнем состоянии, и спрогнозировать перспективы ее дальнейшего развития. Статья опирается на эмпирические наблюдения и ссылки на сообщения СМИ, которые не получили достаточного обсуждения и широко не рассматривались. В ней также используются несколько научных источников, доказывающих, что геополитическая обстановка, в которой Россия проводит свою внешнюю политику, по большей части была сформирована наследием США, проводившими гибридные войны в регионе. В ретроспективе становится понятно, что тем самым была создана благодатная почва для революционных перемен в ближневосточной стратегии Москвы. Подводя итог вышесказанному, Россия стремится заменить США в качестве приоритетного и надежного партнера стран Ближнего Востока и заполнить образовавшийся стратегический вакуум, воспользовавшись ослаблением американского влияния в регионе, которые было вызвано подъемом Исламского государства с катастрофическими последствиями, а также спорами вокруг ядерной сделки с Ираном. К концу 2016 г. у России на этом направлении был бешеный успех.
ABSTRACTThis multidisciplinary pedagogy offers eight allegorical images in support of a visually contextual reading of The Prince. Responding to the pedagogical problem of students treating the text as an ahistorical manual for action addressed to them, our approach resituates The Prince in its visual cultural context. This allows us to specify Machiavelli's innovations as a theorist in terms of the importance of plurality and particularity in regard to political action. An online supplemental appendix provides access to databases and additional resources. Exploring Machiavelli's politicized moral concepts of prudence, parsimony, liberality, fortune, and impetuosity using these images, we show his masterful invocation and redeployment of the cultural codes of his time. In presenting a visual history of concepts, we hope to move students beyond common contemporary ideological biases and literal readings and to alert them to the complex stories and relationships evident in the visual history of civic humanism.
