‍Central Asia and The Caucasus Journal

Abstract Central Asia has many capacities to generate and use renewable energy. Addressing energy insecurity in the region may be the strongest incentive for Central Asian governments to develop renewable energy resources. Central Asia is rich in hydrocarbon reserves, but the uneven distribution of these resources across countries, burnout of facilities and inefficient energy management, threaten development of the whole region. However, moving towards alternative energy will also have many other advantages for the Central Asia region, including decreasing concerns about energy security in the region. Promoting regional cooperation is one of the definitive benefits of expanding renewable resources in Central Asian countries that the present paper seeks to address. The present literature tries to find an answer for the following questions: "How do implementing renewable energy projects by central Asian countries affect regional cooperation; and why?” The author argues that due to interdependence of the Central Asian countries in the field of energy, the renewable energy resources as their ​​common interest (and not as a parallel, divergent or conflicting interest) as well as the need for regional countries to have an integrated energy system, implementing renewable energy projects by the Central Asian countries can enhance intergovernmental cooperation in regional integration arena. Using descriptive-analytical method and the causal methodology the author tries to tell why the research findings provide an answer to the research question.

Abstract The establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union strengthened Russia's position in bilateral relations towards other members of the union, although the multilateral relations between post-communist countries remained without progress. Establishing Eurasian Economic Union to some extent also has fulfilled the geopolitical ambitions of Moscow, but the determination of the geopolitical agenda for this union by Moscow, despite the presence of members with the primary objective of economic interests, will not be easy. This is despite the fact that Russia has incurred considerable costs to establish this union and has pursued the policy of "luring by subsidizing". The main question of this article is "what does Russian expect to gain through in vesting on the establishment and expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union, considering the fact bilateral agreements with post-Soviet governments provides this country with more economic benefits?” The hypothesis tested under the framework of the new regionalism theory is: "although Russia's primary goal by establishing and expanding the Eurasian Economic Union is to strengthen a geopolitical deploy against the West at the borders of the European Union at the expense of exorbitant costs in order to keep these countries away from the west, it has not over looked the benefits of a long term economic, social and cultural cohesion of this union in the post-Soviet space". The study is descriptive-analytical and methodology applied to analyze the collected data is causal.