The structural transformation of the international system that I outlined here three years ago is no longer speculative.[1] The process of the international system’s bifurcation has accelerated. Besides the obvious trade wars, military buildups, and geopolitical confrontations, this phenomenon manifests through increasingly incompatible institutional models, infrastructural competition, and overlapping economic-security frameworks. The analytical framework applied here, as in my earlier article, derives from the theory of complex systems.[2] In this view, international system as a complex adaptive system progresses through identifiable phases.
We are now toward the end of the fifth phase of development of the current international system, which in my earlier article I explained is called “teleopoiesis.” Any complex system begins, during its fifth phase, to project the dynamics that anticipate and potentialize its eventual re-foundation after the end of the ninth and final phase. We are now on the cusp of the sixth phase, “entelechy,” during which those dynamics persist and begin their continued, actual realization of that potential.[3] As Aristotle, who coined the term, used it—particularly in the Metaphysics and Parts of Animals—entelechy represents the material realization of a thing’s essence (eidos) together with its goal (telos).
In a complex-systems context with reference to the current international system, this signifies that bifurcation between U.S.-led and China-led networks of influence, including but not limited to geopolitical blocs, does not imply the mutual isolation of these blocs. Rather, we see the emergence of parallel infrastructures, institutional logics, and normative systems that coexist in tension. Central Eurasia represents a field where this bifurcation is materialized through infrastructural development and operationalized through multivector diplomacy (including institutional experimentation). I will now explain how this is so, then discuss the implications before concluding this analysis.
Infrastructure development
This behavior is transitional and does not yet constitute the emergence of a new system but only the projection of anticipated systemic successors. The structures that survive will not be those best adapted to the present but those most responsive to the emerging configuration. The competitive logic of bifurcation is most visible in the infrastructural domain. The Trans-Caspian International Trade Route (TITR), also called the “Middle Corridor,” connects China to Europe via Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. It has attracted increased interest from both regional and external actors. On the basis of figures for the first 11 months of 2024, it is anticipated the total freight volumes will amount to about 4.47 million tons, marking a 63 percent year-over-year increase.[4] This is approximately three times the volume in 2022.[5]
Kazakhstan Railways reported that east-west traffic volumes continued to rise in 2023, driven by flows diverted from northern Russian routes.[6] These figures indicate a reconfiguration of strategic geography, not just a logistical redirection. In 2023, the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route saw over 20% more customs-cleared containers than in 2021, and rail freight handled at the Aktau Port (Kazakhstan) increased by 14 percent year-on-year.[7] Delivery times between Europe and Asia have in some instances been reduced to as little as 15 days, enhancing the corridor’s competitiveness.[8]
China’s infrastructural imprint in Central Asia increasingly integrates surveillance, telecommunications, and data-management systems that reflect the internal logic of its domestic regime. Huawei and ZTE continue to be key suppliers for Central Asian digital infrastructure, and smart-city pilots incorporating biometric tracking have been launched in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan, over 70 percent of state data flows through data centers built with Chinese equipment.[9] These technologies instantiate vertical dependency through centralized data flows and administrative replication.
The West, led by the European Union, has responded with infrastructure counter-initiatives, including the Global Gateway strategy, which targets transport, energy, and digital networks.[10] Russia, by contrast, relies on legacy security institutions and historical clientelism, although its reach has contracted significantly following the invasion of Ukraine.
Multivector diplomacy
In this bifurcating environment, the capacity of small states to exercise strategic agency is not eliminated but reconditioned. One of the countries that keenly illustrates this is Azerbaijan. Following its military restoration of control over Karabakh in 2020 and 2023, Azerbaijan has expanded its diplomatic and infrastructural footprint. In addition to energy exports through the Southern Gas Corridor—which supplied over 11 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to Europe in 2023[11]—Azerbaijan has promoted east-west transit initiatives aligning with the Middle Corridor vision. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway has experienced renewed investment,[12] while the Baku International Sea Trade Port continues to expand its throughput capacity, with a target of 25 million tons annually by 2030.[13]
Azerbaijan’s foreign policy, for example, is marked by fine-tuned diversification. Strategic partnerships with Turkey and Israel coexist with pragmatic relations with the EU, China, and even post-invasion Russia. This diversification is not merely hedging but a structured form of resilience within a complex system. The country’s participation in multilateral formats—from the Organization of Turkic States to the Non-Aligned Movement—further demonstrates a logic of modular engagement that enables adaptation without over-commitment.
Kazakhstan has diversified in a similar manner, increasing energy exports to China and Europe while deepening institutional cooperation with Turkey and the EU. In 2023, Kazakhstan exported 80 million tons of crude oil, of which 15 percent was rerouted through non-Russian routes, mainly across the Caspian Sea into the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline[14]. Uzbekistan, for its part, has sought digital infrastructure not only from China but also from South Korea, while engaging in regional security forums with Russia and economic dialogues with Western partners. What emerges is a pattern of “strategic redundancy,” whereby multiple alignment pathways are constructed in anticipation of systemic disjunctions.
Discussion
Corridor security remains a vulnerability. Central Asian corridors face diplomatic volatility, infrastructural undercapacity, and varying institutional competence. Bilateral and multilateral to strengthen these pathways continue apace. Thus in 2024, for example the EU pledged €10 billion for connectivity investments in Central Asia, including road, rail, and port modernization.[15] According to the Asian Development Bank, logistics costs in Central Asia are up to 3.5 times higher than in the EU, which continues to impede regional competitiveness.[16]
Demographic dynamics make the build-out more urgent. Central Asia’s population is projected to nearly 84 million in 2025 and 114 million by 2050.[17] Uzbekistan alone, with nearly half of the region’s people, is experiencing youth bulges in the population pyramid that demand job creation and infrastructure expansion. Russia, by contrast, faces demographic contraction; its working-age population projected to shrink by eight million people by 2040.[18] These trends incidentally accentuate the importance of functional corridors and adaptive institutions in regions where demographic growth must be matched with economic integration.
In sum, the 2020s prefigure the future dynamics of the international system. The systemic bifurcation underway is not solely a result of great-power rivalry but also a consequence of regional adaptations. Central Eurasian actors such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan demonstrate how small and medium states can exercise agency by designing infrastructural, institutional, and diplomatic redundancies. These are not simple reactions to uncertainty. They are anticipatory strategies that proactively contribute to the formation and projection of future system logics. Nor is the phenomenon limited to Central Eurasia. In Europe, Poland is playing such a role.
Conclusion
Looking beyond the 2020s, the international system is likely to traverse the sixth phase of complex-systemic evolution (“entelechy”) by the late 2020s. The early 2030s, then, would mark the onset of generalized institutional crises, followed by a more visible collapse of legacy global frameworks. In Central Asia, the drivers determining how this crisis resolves itself will include intensified cyber competition, financial fragmentation, demographic divergence, and further polarization of technical standards.
Regional subsystems that have created durable and overlapping mechanisms of cooperation and infrastructure—will form the foundational substrates for the reconstitution of a successor international system beginning in the late 2050s, after a dozen years of what will look at the time as chaos but will in retrospect make more sense (like the post–Cold War years from 1991 to 2002). The South Caucasus and Central Asia are therefore not peripheral but prefigurative: together forming an international “macroregion,” they represent one of the loci where the successor international system’s scaffolding is being prototyped.
REFERENCES
[1]. Robert M. Cutler, “Europe in the ‘New’ International System,” Strategy International, 31 March 2022, https://strategyinternational.org/2022/03/31/europe-in-the-new-international-system-2/.
[2]. Yaneer Bar-Yam, Dynamics of Complex Systems (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997).
[3]. All nine phases are set out concisely and explicated through an applied-theoretical study in: Robert M. Cutler and Alexander von Lingen, “An Evolutionary Phenomenology of Resilience,” Kybernetes 48, no. 4 (April 2019): 685–695, http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/K-11-2017-0460.
[4]. Luca Urciuolo, “The Middle Corridor’s Reality Check: Advancements and Challenges in Port Infrastructure in the Greater Caspian Region,” European Institute for Asian Studies, 28 February 2025, https://eias.org/policy-briefs/the-middle-corridors-reality-check-advancements-and-challenges-in-port-infrastructure-in-the-greater-caspian-region/.
[5]. Dilara Rafi, “Azerbaijan’s Strategic Role in the Middle Corridor,” Munich Personal RePEc Archive, 25 October 2024, https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/122499/1/MPRA_paper_122499.pdf.
[6]. Daniyar Kelbetov, Asset Onglassov, and Nurlan Taiganov, “Transport and Logistiics in Kazakhstan,” Astana International Financial Centre, April 2024, https://aifc.kz/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2.3-transport-and-logistics-in-kazakhstan-april-2024.pdf.
[7]. Saniya Sakenova, “Cargo Transshipment in Aktau Port Grows 23% in 2023,” The Astana Times, 21 July 2023, https://astanatimes.com/2023/07/cargo-transshipment-in-aktau-port-grows-23-in-2023/.
[8]. “The TITR Working Group meeting held in Tbilisi,” Middle Corridor, 4 December 2024, https://middlecorridor.com/en/press-center/news/the-titr-working-group-meeting-held-in-tbilisi.
[9]. Berikbol Dukeyev, Dilfuza Mirzakhmedova, and Madina Tursonova, “Huawei’s Growing Presence in Central Asia’s Telecom Industry,” The Diplomat, 23 December 2023, https://thediplomat.com/2023/12/huaweis-growing-presence-in-central-asias-telecom-industry/.
[10]. Robert M. Cutler, “The Middle Corridor is Being Funded Faster than Expected,” The Times of Central Asia, 27 May 2024, https://timesca.com/the-middle-corridor-is-being-funded-faster-than-expected/.
[11]. Toghrul Ali, “Azerbaijan Strengthens Commitment to Double Gas Exports to Europe,” Caspian Policy Center, 8 March 2024, https://www.caspianpolicy.org/research/energy-and-environment/azerbaijan-strengthens-commitment-to-double-gas-exports-to-europe.
[12]. Robert M. Cutler, “World Bank study recalibrates Middle Corridor,” Asia Times, 11 December 2023, https://asiatimes.com/2023/12/world-bank-study-recalibrates-middle-corridor/.
[13]. “Azerbaijani, Iranian delegations inspect Baku International Sea Trade Port,” Azerbaycan24, https://www.azerbaycan24.com/en/azerbaijani-iranian-delegations-inspect-baku-international-sea-trade-port/.
[14]. Vusala Abbasova, “Kazakhstan to Scale Up BTC Pipeline Oil Exports Thirteenfold,” Caspian News, 27 November 2024, https://caspiannews.com/news-detail/kazakhstan-to-scale-up-btc-pipeline-oil-exports-thirteenfold-2024-11-27-0/.
[15]. European Commission, “The European Union and Central Asia establish a Strategic Partnership during groundbreaking summit,” 3 April 2025, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ac_25_990.
[16]. Alfinura Sharafeyeva, “Impact of High Trade Costs and Uncertain Time to Trade on Exports from Five Central Asian Countries,” March 2023, http://dx.doi.org/10.22617/WPS230080-2.
[17]. “Projections par continent,” L’Institut national d’études démographiques (INED), July 2024, https://www.ined.fr/fr/tout-savoir-population/chiffres/projections-mondiales/projections-par-continent/.
[18]. Paul Goble, “Russia’s Demographic Decline Will be Deeper, Last Longer, and Hurt More Than Expected,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 20:164 (24 October 2023), https://www.jamestown.org/program/russias-demographic-decline-will-be-deeper-last-longer-and-hurt-more-than-expected/..
