Last week I gave a lecture at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven on whether or not an “Arab Spring”-style revolution could happen in Eurasia and more specifically in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. My answer was: probably not in the immediate term (say, before five to seven years from now) and not as part of a “chain reaction” from the current Arab Spring. In the long term, some of the regimes will bite the dust, however. The reason for the both likelihoods is actually the same: a combination of youth bulge, social mobility and delayed/stunted social change, modern ICT penetration, and rigidifying first-family regimes. These factors are creating the conditions that keep a revolt at bay for now but could also eventually make an explosion or a coup of some sort inevitable.

A key element of my presentation concerned comparing/contrasting the Arab and Eurasian states. Ultimately, if one lesson from the Arab Spring (and Kyrgyzstan) applies to Eurasia, then it is this: that things at some point can go unexpectedly fast, and that internal dynamics, both within the regimes and within the wider society, are much more important than whatever geopolitical designs or “Great Game powers’ desire for stability” can actually control.

I think the lecture was received well. There were some good questions, particularly from one Russian student who seemed to know Tajikistan’s dynamics fairly well. Another student came up with the somewhat bizarre question regarding the extent to which the Arab Spring was part of a strategy to eliminate regimes that might side with Iran in case of an attack. That seems too far-fetched and highly improbable to me.

Schwartz was on hand to add some pros and cons, as well as to expand the frame of the discussion to the other Central Asian states, particularly Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (Turkmenistan, as always, remains the mystery country although under the surface, more could be going there on than meets the eye). He invited me to make my presentation available via NewEurasia because I’ve got original and recent data regarding demographics, labor and telecommunications, defense spending, and a point-by-point comparison/contrast between the Arab and Central Asian regimes.

Click here to download it: English PDF