Yale’s Central Asia Initiative, the centerpiece of its offerings on the increasingly important region, is falling short of its true potential.
Luce Hall at Yale, which houses Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. (Credit: Buckley Institute)
Benjamin Nuland
Contributor, The Buckley Beacon
For many Americans, Central Asia remains a distant periphery, a vague space between Russia, China, and the Middle East. Yet this assumption misses its status as of the most consequential geopolitical laboratories of the 21st century. Yale’s Central Asia Initiative (CAI), one of the few institutions of its kind in the United States, is uniquely positioned to transform how students engage with the region, not simply as a historical and cultural relic, but as an arena of emerging statecraft, economic modernization, and strategic competition.
CAI was established in 2024 as a regional initiative of the MacMillan Center’s European Studies Council and is staffed by Professors Molly Brunson, Carly Koebel, and Christina Andriotis, amongst others. “According to Brunson, CAI was founded “to bring the region’s importance into focus for outsiders who might not otherwise recognize it.”
CAI’s founding couldn’t have come at a better time. For most of the 20th century, contemporary Central Asian states were constituent republics of the USSR. Now as independent states of the 21st century, Central Asia offers unusually approachable case studies for understanding modern governance in an era of geopolitical competition. It has it all: questions of energy security, climate policy, technological development, supply chain resilience, and great-power rivalry.
Hydroelectric expansion in countries such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for one example, has elevated water management into a geopolitical issue, where green energy ambitions increasingly collide with regional disputes over downstream access and agricultural dependence. At the same time, Central Asia’s reserves of uranium, rare earths, and other critical minerals position the region within emerging global competition over supply chains for aerospace and AI infrastructure. Uzbekistan, for example, is simultaneously attempting to leverage this moment to become a regional hub for automobile manufacturing, logistics, and technological entrepreneurship. Policymakers have had to balance the attraction of foreign capital with concerns over economic sovereignty and strategic dependence.
These developments have attracted growing attention in Washington. The Trump administration’s Development Finance Corporation has sought to deepen economic engagement with the region through joint ventures, like the recently announced joint investment platform with Uzbekistan. As Ben Black, CEO of the DFC stated explicitly, “The Trans-Caspian region represents one of the most strategically significant economic corridors in the world. Through our new platform, we will expand and strengthen U.S. supply chains while creating economic growth.” The appointment of Uzbekistan-born Sergio Gor as special envoy to Central Asia and ambassador to India focused on South and Central Asia further signals U.S. interest in strengthening ties and cultivating a beachhead for American businesses hoping to diversify critical supply chains.
In this sense, Central Asia is not merely a peripheral, post-Soviet space but a laboratory of modern statecraft. Governments across the region pursue highly pragmatic hedging strategies: they remain capital-friendly and eager for foreign investment while maintaining deep suspicion toward external political influence, whether from China, Russia, or the United States. This creates compelling case studies in how small countries attempt to preserve autonomy amid renewed competition between larger states. The region offers students and analysts a rich environment for studying the tension between ambitious developmental visions and material realities of corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and uneven state capacity, yet this wide-ranging potential scholarship eludes CAI.
This growing relevance is already reflected in student interests at Yale. Interest in the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese borderland policy, and post-Soviet governance has expanded far beyond traditional area studies, as shown by classes on these topics receiving far more applications than available seats. Students are drawn to Central Asia to understand China’s outward projection of influence and Central Asian governments’ response to it, whether through accommodation, hedging, or resistance. Scholars of the Middle East and political Islam have likewise turned to the region to study how post-Soviet governments reconcile secular modernization with state-managed forms of Islam, particularly in the aftermath of Afghanistan and the broader “War on Terror.”
Despite this demand, CAI has fallen short in its offerings on Central Asia’s geopolitics. Its programming remains oriented toward anthropology, literature, and Soviet-era cultural studies, producing highly specialized but self-selecting audiences. Undergraduate opportunities in particular remain limited. Professor Roosien teaches a fantastic history course on the imperial and Soviet period of Central Asia every few semesters, but there are no courses on post-independence Central Asian geopolitics anywhere to be found at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs or elsewhere. Exchange programs CAI offers, such as the collaboration with KIMEP University in Kazakhstan, are unaccessible to undergraduates.
The majority of Yale students interested in international affairs already possess analytical toolkits in geopolitics, public policy, and international affairs that could be applied meaningfully to the region. If CAI seeks not only to expand Yale’s reputation in Central Asia but also to cultivate future American policymakers and analysts capable of engaging the region strategically, then geopolitics must move closer to the center of its mission.
An effective avenue for engaging Central Asian institutions is through Yale’s own Central Asian students. As Yale’s undergraduate organization focused on the region, Asian Crossroads already possesses a form of institutional capital that the Central Asia Initiative could more fully incorporate into its long-term strategy. Many of its members, including some of the first students from their respective Central Asian countries to attend Yale, maintain active relationships with embassies and consulates from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and beyond. Over the past four years alone, Asian Crossroads has hosted ambassadorial, senatorial, and ministerial delegations from Uzbekistan, while also bringing American diplomatic perspectives into the conversation through speakers such as Daniel Rosenblum, former ambassador to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
A stronger geopolitical orientation would not require abandoning cultural engagement. Events such as Nowruz celebrations and traditional activities like lepeshka-making remain valuable forms of cultural outreach and community building. Yet Yale’s comparative advantage increasingly lies in connecting Central Asia to broader global conversations on technology, climate policy, energy security, economic development, and sovereignty. A greater focus on geopolitics would create more opportunities for collaboration with the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, attract stronger student participation, and position CAI as a visible U.S. hub for discussions on emerging strategic issues.
Yale already possesses the resources, networks, staffing, and student initiative necessary to make this possible. What remains is the institutional willingness and willpower to engage Central Asia more intentionally as a region central to the geopolitical challenges of the modern era rather than as a periphery.
Benjamin Nuland is a fourth year history major at Yale. He is the outgoing President of Asian Crossroads at Yale, Former Publisher at the Yale Review of International Studies, and the Co-Founder and Co-President of the Asian Jewish Union and the Yale Dialogue on US-China Relations. He is also a former International Collaboration Lead for The Politic, and the Undergraduate Head of the 1768 Foundation.