ABSTRACT
What is termed ‘global politics’ consists of states and their agents interacting with each other, mostly within overlapping regions. The present volume addresses a region – a subset of countries encompassed by super-continent Eurasia – comprising multiple nation-states with few common characteristics, a history of episodic interaction punctuated by occasional cooperation but mostly imperial conquests, violence, subordination and conflict. Occupying huge spaces spanning two continents, China, Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia search for new forms of mutual accommodation as they seek to modernize in the post-communist era. Alone in retaining a formal communist facade is China, whose demographic and economic growth provides both opportunity and threat to the former Soviet Union, now transformed into an anodyne Commonwealth of Independent States. How well the new arrangements work will depend upon diplomatic skill and political wisdom in addressing the issues described in the preceding essays.
