Geopolitical Central Earth of the 19th And 20th Century to the Logistics Centrality in the 21st Century: Does Afghanistan belong to South Asia or to ‘New Asia’?

Abstract

The spirit of this special issue of the Revue Public Administration and Regional Studies is that of encounter. This is of course the intellectual encounter between researchers and colleagues from three diverse backgrounds, Central Europe, Central Asia and Western Europe but also of a meeting between three regions of Eurasia which, for decades, were separated from each other. It was still difficult to travel from Le Havre to Galati or Almaty thirty years ago. Today, on the contrary, it is permissible to meet. Since 2004, many collaborations have been set up. Our Europe-Asia conferences in 2012 fully involved colleagues from several Central Asian countries and our already long-standing ties with Romania have been further strengthened. The destiny of Central Earth therefore seems to us to be in full mutation.