By: Dariush Onsori

Central Asia, often regarded as a backwater still languishing in its Soviet and Russian-dominated past, it is now an arena of geopolitical competition, especially between China and India, whose approaches and wherewithal differ.  China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI) has a pretty explicit political component, one visible in what has been termed “debt-trap diplomacy”  and its use of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to advance its view of surveillance governance.  

India’s approach, on the other hand, is necessarily more limited in ambition, as reflected in the 2002 agreement among Iran and Russia, to develop the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a far more efficient route for travel than the standard route from Mumbai to Moscow.  Read more …