Please join the Fletcher Eurasia Club for a lunch seminar with Anna Ohanyan, Richard B. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Stonehill College and author of The Neighborhood Effect: The Imperial Roots of Regional Fracture in Eurasia (2022). We will discuss the geopolitics of the South Caucasus amid the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war and great power politics.

The Russian war of conquest against Ukraine, regardless of its short-term military and political successes or failures on the frontlines, has significantly damaged the strategic centrality of the Russian state in both the global economy and international politics. The aggression and ensuing Western sanctions have only accelerated the slow decline of a largely unreformed state. Russia’s loss of geopolitical and strategic leverage over Eurasian connectivity– both infrastructural and political– is a development of historical proportions. In The Neighborhood Effect, Ohanyan argues that the proliferation of the sub-regions in the Eurasian continent continues to challenge U.S. foreign policy built around maintaining a global primacy in the continent. The fragmented and fractured regional geopolitics of today’s Eurasia, perhaps more than the rise of China as a global rival, remains an immediate threat to the rules-based order nurtured under American stewardship. Ohanyan will focus on the South Caucasus as she explores some of these themes.

We encourage you to read in advance the following articles by Ohanyan on the regional fracture and political intractability of the late Ottoman Empire as well as illiberal peacebuilding and the case of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Eurasia Club weekly lunch seminar series engages with students, faculty, staff, and researchers to foster a better understanding of the region among members of the Fletcher community. Members of the wider Tufts community are also welcome to attend. Lunch will be served.

Anna Ohanyan is Richard B. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. She is a two-time Fulbright Scholar and a Nonresident Senior Scholar in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ohanyan has authored, edited, and coedited five books and numerous academic articles. Her most recent book The Neighborhood Effect: The Imperial Roots of Regional Fracture in Eurasia, was published with Stanford University Press in 2022. She is a public scholar and has contributed to Bloomberg-Asia, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CNBC-Asia, MSNBC, BBC, PBS, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, and The Washington Quarterly, among many other news outlets and policy journals. Ohanyan has also consulted for numerous organizations, such as the U.S. State Department, the United Nations Foundation, the World Bank, the National Intelligence Council Project at Maryland University, the Carter Center, and USAID. Her work has taken her across the globe, from Northern Ireland to the Balkans, Russia, and the South Caucasus.