ABSTRACT
Tajikistan is a country of high mountains and deep contradictions—economically poor and geopolitically wealthy. Its terrain offers many strategic advantages. It is a gatekeeper to the West for its development-hungry neighbor, China, and may be essential to any hegemonic power that seeks to control the Eurasian land mass. It possesses a vital natural resource: large and highly elevated glaciers that feed runoff into a network of rivers flowing downstream to neighboring states. This vast blanket of ice represents kinetic energy that, if harnessed, could generate electricity essential to Central Asia’s development. Its location makes this relatively small nation the switchyard for gas pipelines, transmission lines, roads, and, for China, a much-desired proposed rail and telecommunications route dubbed the “New Silk Road” or, more formally, the Silk Road Economic Belt. Because Tajikistan is in the midst of multinational plans for high dams, hydropower plants, and communication corridors, it provides a case study in how policymakers can ignore climate change, although its effects are already being felt and could alter the balance of power throughout Eurasia.
