Great Power Competition
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Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan have spent thirty-five years building a foreign policy posture that simultaneously serves Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Iranian, US, and EU interests. The C5+1 formats (with the US since 2015 and with the EU and Turkey since 2022) test how durable the multiple alignment is.
Central Asia is not a region. It is five sovereign states with diverging trajectories that share a colonial inheritance and a current need to balance four-plus major external powers.
Kazakhstan-China bilateral trade (2024): $43.7B — exceeded Kazakhstan-Russia trade for the first time.
Great Power Competition
Bobo Lo, formerly of Chatham House and the Lowy Institute, has written the most rigorous accounts of the Russia-China relationship for two decades. His reading of the 2022 'no limits' framing emphasises what the partnership cannot and will not do.
The 'no limits' phrase was Chinese diplomatic flourish. The limits are imposed by China, on Chinese terms, and Moscow has accepted them because the alternatives are worse.
China's share of Russian exports, 2021: 14%, 2024: 31% (Russian Federal Customs Service / Chinese General Administration of Customs).
April 24, 2026
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Great Power Competition
India's post-2022 foreign policy is widely described as 'non-alignment 2.0' or 'multi-alignment'. The descriptors capture the surface; the underlying logic is older and harder to summarise. Russian oil imports, Quad membership, and BRICS+ participation are all serving the same Indian strategic interest.
India is not balancing between the US and China. India is balancing the US, China, Russia, and the Gulf simultaneously — each against the others when convenient.
Russian oil share of Indian crude imports: 0.2% in early 2022, 38% by mid-2024 (Kpler).
February 9, 2026
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Great Power Competition
TSMC produces over 90% of the world's leading-edge semiconductors, all on a 36,000 km² island within striking range of the People's Liberation Army. That fact organizes a remarkable amount of contemporary geopolitics.
The strategic question is not whether the world depends on Taiwan. It's how much disruption the world can absorb if it loses Taiwan.
TSMC share of <5nm chip production: 92% (2024 estimates)
February 4, 2026
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Great Power Competition
Eyck Freymann's 2021 book *One Belt One Road* and his subsequent work on US-China economic policy treat 'decoupling' and 'derisking' less as alternative strategies than as the same emergent policy described in different political accents.
Decoupling and derisking are the same trend with different press releases. The economic effect is what matters, and the economic effect is now visible in the trade data.
US goods imports from China as share of total US goods imports: 21.6% in 2017, 13.4% in 2023, 13.9% in 2024 (US Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Data).
January 13, 2026
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