The Rumi Forum presented “After Manas: What’s Next for the US in Central Asia?” with Paul Goble, Specialist on Eurasia.
Kyrgyzstan’s decision to close the US military base at Manas has called attention to the intensifying geopolitical competition in the center of Eurasia. The US moved into the region in a major way in the 1990s. Is it now on the defensive? Or is the Kygyz decision simply a bump on the road forward?
Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious affairs in Eurasia, currently teaches and oversees publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy in Baku. Prior to joining that institution but after retiring from the U.S. government in 2004, he was vice dean for the social sciences at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. Earlier, he served in a variety of capacities in the U.S. government, including at the Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency; at U.S. international broadcasting institutions like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America, and at various think tanks, including the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Potomac Foundation, and the Jamestown Foundation. The editor of five volumes on ethnicity and religion in the former Soviet space, he continues to prepare daily commentaries on these issues, posting his articles at www.windowoneurasia.blogspot.com or on request by e-list ( paul.goble@gmail.com ). Trained at Miami University in Ohio and the University of Chicago, he has been decorated by the governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for his work in promoting Baltic independence and the withdrawal of Russian forces from those formerly occupied lands.
Moderator :
Hailey Cook started her career with several social and political non-profit organizations after receiving in 2007 her B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She also studied at Bogaziçi University in 2006. Previously she worked as an aid for the legal redress of the North Carolina NAACP, as a researcher with the Turkey and Caspian Energy Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and as a fundraising and development specialist for progressive non-profits and US Congressional and Senate candidates. Currently she is Project Coordinating for the SETA Foundation for Political, Social and Economic Research in Washington, DC. She also edits a publication called Global Dispatch for Young Professionals in Foreign Policy in Washington, DC.