Abstract
This chapter explains how Afghanistan’s geography has allowed it to influence the stability of Eurasia throughout history, using the “core borderland” concept for the Eurasian continent. It presents an overview of how the power vacuum in Central and Southwest Asia left by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has triggered changes in global affairs and the relevance of these shifts for Europe and its borderlands. A historical and heuristic methodology, combined with political and socio-economic analysis, is employed to analyze Afghanistan’s role in Eurasian affairs. The power vacuum is also seen as a fundamental trigger for a potential new wave of instability that could affect Europe and beyond.
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Colibășanu, A. (2023). The Core Borderland: Afghanistan. In: Geopolitics, Geoeconomics and Borderlands. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33940-0_3
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