The EU’s renewed focus on enlargement and neighbourhood policy is shifting its borders eastward and will significantly affect the Union’s future neighbouring countries. The 2004 “big bang” enlargement clearly showed how profoundly enlargement can shape neighbourhood policy. These effects are now intensified by today’s rapidly changing geopolitical environment. Any future neighbourhood policy must therefore account for these dynamics — including in Central Asia.
The chapter "Geopolitics in Central Asia: The European Union Participating in a New Great Game over Land-Locked Countries?" by Julian Plottka, which was published in the edited volume „The European Union’s Geopolitics“ by Mathias Jopp and Johannes Pollak, examines how Russia’s war against Ukraine has transformed the geopolitical landscape of Central Asia and what this means for the EU. It highlights how classical geopolitical ideas — from Mahan’s view of landlocked vulnerabilities to Mackinder’s Heartland Theory — have regained relevance as Eurasia becomes a key arena of connectivity and competition. At the same time, contemporary analyses of power politics point to an intensified “New Great Game” among Russia, China, and the United States. Yet the chapter shows that Central Asian states are far from passive: through increasingly assertive multi-vector foreign policies, they actively navigate and shape geopolitical competition.
A closer look at the region’s political and economic context reveals opportunities and constraints for the EU — from security challenges and economic diversification to persistent social inequalities and the green transition. Against this backdrop, the chapter assesses how the EU’s current Central Asia policy can engage more strategically with a region that is becoming both more contested and more self-confident.
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