PRINCESS CASPIAN:

A Different View of the Islamic World: Caspian Countries Defy Stereotypes (Baku Today, 31/01/2003)

[Brenda] Shaffer is research director of the Kennedy School's Caspian Studies Program. Its chairman is Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government. Founded in 1999, the Caspian Studies Program focuses on those countries that surround the Caspian Sea, the huge saltwater lake known for its oil deposits and its caviar.

Even the program's title represents something of a paradigm shift. Under a more traditional scheme, Iran, which borders the Caspian on the South, would be considered part of the Middle East. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan on the East would be seen as part of Central Asia, while on the West, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia would be part of the Caucasus. Russia, which borders the Caspian to the West and North, has always been a geographic anomaly because it spans both Europe and Asia.

But the term "Caspian region" makes sense because the countries are all part of the Caspian basin, and Shaffer believes that defining regions in functional terms, based on how people live, whom they interact with, what their economic and security interests are, makes more sense than simply drawing an arbitrary line around a geographic area.

Part of what Shaffer hopes to do is get people, and especially U.S. policy-makers, to see the world in these functional terms rather than make assumptions on the basis of cultural, ethnic, or religious identity. As far as the Caspian region goes, she believes that shift is crucial.

"These are countries that can contribute to our energy security, to nuclear nonproliferation, to antiterrorism," she says, "and they were cooperating before 9/11!"

Maybe we could have done with fewer stories on shark attacks and Gary Condit and a few more on these bewildering portions of the globe. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 31, 2003 12:31 PM