Chessboard No More: the Rise of Central Asia’s International Agency

By Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr

October 3, 2023

Central Asia is often portrayed through metaphors such as a “Grand Chessboard” or a “Great Game,” which suggest that the players in the game are the great powers, and the Central Asian states are merely pawns in this game. This might have been a plausible argument thirty years ago. But today, thirty years into independence, it is abundantly clear that Central Asian states have agency at the regional and even global level.