This systematic analysis of the latest developments and trends in Central Asia assembles scholars from the United States, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, under the expert direction of Boris Rumer. With the evolving geopolitical situation as a background, they provide perceptive and reality-based appraisals of a host of key issues in the region, including: the influence of the Islamic factor; the deterioration of domestic political situations generated by the character of the ruling regimes; the dynamics and structural asymmetry of regional economies due to hypertrophy of the raw materials sector; and the deficiencies and failures of institutional reform in the social and economic spheres. In today’s world, as centuries-old norms of political and economic order are being destroyed, we need to think carefully about the essential questions of politics, economics, and public life in the states examined here, independent only since the 1990s and now proclaimed the bulwark against terrorism.