Joshua Kucera

Deal With a Dictator - The Atlantic

I have a new story on Uzbekistan in the December issue of The Atlantic:

“Business and state power are basically the same thing here,” says one journalist based in the capital of Tashkent who is well connected within the government and also friendly with the country’s beleaguered opposition. He talked freely with me about various internal intrigues, but when I asked about who might be profiting from the freight business, he clammed up. “You have to ask the Americans,” he said. “All I can tell you is, it’s impossible to do business clean here. And this transit is filling the budget of Uzbekistan.” A partial list of local operators, provided by the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, includes Fifth Millenium Networks, a former subsidiary of Zeromax, a huge holding company for state-owned businesses that is believed to have close ties to Karimov’s daughter.

Read the whole thing here.

New project: The Bug Pit

I'm happy to announce the launch of a new project I'm working on, a blog for EurasiaNet on military and security issues in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It's called The Bug Pit, and if you're not familiar with the story of the bug pit of Bukhara, you can see a little explanation on the site. 

It's still early days, and kinks are still being worked out, but I hope you'll follow it and chime in with your knowledge and opinions. And if you're a Twitterer, you can follow along there, too.

Where Russia Meets China - Slate

I have a new series posted on Slate this week, based on my recent trip through the Russian Far East. It covers the Siberian Liberation Army, the Russian government's concern about Chinese immigration, Russians' enthusiasm for China, the dissident used car dealers of Vladivostok, and Russians who are emigrating to China. Enjoy.

The Search for Genghis Khan's grave

One of the the projects that I was working on during my recent trip to China, Mongolia and Russia has been published, on the search for Genghis Khan’s tomb. It’s one of the great remaining archeological mysteries and it looks like it’s about to be solved, though with a whole bunch of cultural, political and geopolitical complications.

There are five stories. The first is on the background of the search; the second on the two groups now searching for the grave; the third on the Genghis Khan “mausoleum” in China and his legacy there and in Russia; the fourth on the money to be made on Genghis Khan in Mongolia and the fifth on how most Mongolians don’t actually want the grave to be found.

Plus, there are lots of photos. So check it out and enjoy.

Oil on Ice - The Atlantic

I have a short piece on Greenland in this month's Atlantic:

...some estimates, including those of the U.S. Geological Survey, suggest Greenland’s coastal waters could hold anywhere from 16 billion to 47 billion barrels of oil, or 800,000 barrels for every man, woman, and child. That would mean a staggering leap in income for Greenlanders, who until two generations ago were mostly subsistence hunters and fishermen. With such massive potential oil reserves, Greenland is poised to achieve a geopolitical importance it hasn’t had since the invention of Risk.

Read the whole thing here. 

 

Coming soon...

Photos from Mexico

This isn't really work-related, but I was on vacation in Mexico a couple months ago, and have some photos. And the site needs a little more color now, so check them out:

Merida

Merida

Valladolid

 

Campeche

Blogging again

Since I ended my last long trip in 2007, I haven't been blogging. But I'm back in the saddle and blogging at a new startup, True/Slant. It's just started up, and kinks are still being worked out, but you can get in on the ground floor now.

My blog is called New World Order, and once I start traveling again it will become a travel blog somewhat like what I had here before. But for now it is my thoughts on international affairs, geopolitics and America's future in the world, focused somewhat on a project I'm working on involving Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela. Check it out, and send feedback.

This site, however, will still be the place to look for new stories I'm publishing.

And finally, check out the inspiration for the name of the new blog, Ministry's classic 1993 song, New World Order (crappy ad in the beginning):

Watch more Cool World (Original Soundtrack) videos on AOL Video

How to build a new energy economy, and still hunt caribou - The Boston Globe

I have a Q&A with the foreign minister of Greenland in the Ideas section of the Boston Globe today:

GREENLAND, A SPARSELY populated, ice-covered island in the Arctic Ocean, has for most of its history been a place where events move at a glacial pace. But lately things in Greenland have been heating up, literally and figuratively: Its traditional economy of subsistence hunting and fishing has become one of the first casualties of global warming, which has disrupted animal migrations and melted the ice needed for dog sledding. And the same climate change is also opening up exploration of potential oil and mineral reserves that many expect will make its 56,000 people vastly wealthy. The world's largest island, almost a synonym for sleepy remoteness, is facing a transformation that could make it one of the biggest geopolitical hot spots of the 21st century, the Kuwait of the Arctic.

Read the rest here.

Crimean Tatars Are the Wild Card of the Region - Slate

The third installment in the Slate Ukraine series is out:

BAKHCHISARAY, Ukraine—The stone minarets of the 15^th-century Khan's Palace that dominate the skyline here, a city of about 50,000 a 30-minute bus ride south from Simferopol, are a reminder that while today Ukraine and Russia are jousting over Crimea, for most of the past millennium, another group ruled the peninsula: the Crimean Tatars. Muslims and speakers of a language closely related to Turkish, the Crimean Tatars are the descendants of the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan who settled here in the 13^th century. Their historical legacy is nearly invisible today, systematically destroyed first by the czars and then the Soviets.

But the Tatars, improbably, have revived themselves and are once again political players in Crimea. They are no longer the rulers, but as a politically active minority, they could act as the wild card in an eventual conflict over Crimea.

The whole thing is here.