EUCACIS Online Paper No. 12: Karina Turan — Prosperity and Resilience as the New Panacea? The New Central Asia Strategy in View of the Security — Development Nexus

Since the independence of the five Central Asian republics in the 1990s, the European Union has been enhancing its ties with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In 2019, the European Commission and the High Representative adopted the Joint Communication on “The EU and Central Asia: New Opportunities for a Stronger Partnership” which intended to update the first Central Asia strategy of 2007. This paper looks at the guiding paradigms of the new Central Asia strategy within the scope of the security-development nexus. The goal of this paper is to show that the EU identifies a strong correlation between security and development issues in the case of Central Asia. It will be seen that the European understanding of security and development becomes a key element of the EU’s new strategy to the given region. The detrimental impact of terrorism, illicit drug trafficking and water security affect not only human security but the regional stability as a whole.
EUCACIS Online Paper No. 12 can be downloaded here.