In 1904 Sir Halford Mackinder, one of the fathers of geopolitics, put forward a ‘Heartland’ theory. Referring to the land mass of Central Asia as the ‘World Island’ he suggested the theory that: ‘Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world.’1 Mackinder’s theory was influential during the World Wars and the Cold War; it attracted further attention after the demise of the Soviet Union when a new political landscape emerged. The post-Soviet republics in the Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia as well as Russia’s North Caucasus) and Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) became a place for a rivalry over influence and resources. Some suggest that ‘The New Great Game’ is unfolding in Central Asia, where some republics have considerable reserves of hydrocarbons to exploit (e.g. Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan), while others provide their territory for military bases (e.g. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan).