In the 1990s, international energy companies crisscrossed the Caspian Sea region in search of opportunities to exploit the oil and gas reserves located therein. The newly independent states of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan all possessed reserves sufficient to warrant this newfound attention. As a result, there was a spate of articles and books—by academics, journalists, and think tank pundits—that cast these actions as a “new Great Game.” The basic premise was that so-called great powers sought to control the region for energy security and to potentially block the influence of competitors. The zenith was the 1997 publication of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book The Grand Chessboard, which referred to the Caspian region as the “fulcrum” of modern geopolitics and Azerbaijan as the “cork” in this “bottle” (25–26). Since that time, and with conflicts in the Middle East, competition in East Asia and the Indian Ocean, as well as the US-led coalition action in Afghanistan, the Caspian region receded in importance for governments and globalists alike.

In Geopolitics and Energy Diplomacy in the Caspian Region, Yunis Gurbanov re-examines this dynamic and updates the challenges of the Caspian region. The author posits that the region could be critical to global energy security, but a variety of obstacles remain that will most likely limit this potential. It still could play a key role in creating opportunities to diversify sources of oil and gas, however, especially as nations are trying to move away from Russian supplies (229).

The author approaches the topic with a thesis-driven methodology: laying out a set of hypotheses, reviewing the critical literature, and then focusing on the case studies of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. With each, Gurbanov briefly summarizes national policies and reviews past actions. He then focuses on the actions and policies of interested nations, specifically Russia, the US, China, and the nations of the European Union (69–70).

The Caspian Region is often framed in geopolitical terms, with security, transnational threats, and economic relations defining how analysts and authors look at it. Yunis Gurbanov acknowledges this as he refines his own approach towards energy security—or “energy diplomacy,” as he calls it. With respect to all nations actively engaged in the Caspian region, the author repeatedly asks the question: is the Caspian region of strategic significance and, if so, what does this mean for the policies of the aforementioned nations?

Perhaps of greater importance for the reader is the author’s own perspective. Gurbanov articulates well the narratives from Baku—both official and corporate—with an eye on how and why Azerbaijan wants to engage with a broader network of nations. Paralleling other discussions of “multi-vectored foreign and security policy,” he underscores why countries in the region look to balance external actors and diversity engagement efforts. He repeats this approach with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Indeed, in the limited discussions on Turkmenistan, the dependency on Chinese economic ties is seen as a limit on that country’s energy diplomacy. “Agency” of Caspian region nations takes center stage.

One can be picky and highlight some stylistic shortcomings: there is a bit of repetition in the information presented, which is largely due to the structure of the book. After all, this is the extension of a dissertation, and at times it reads as such. The theory chapter assumes a solid knowledge of the field of study (international relations) as sources and arguments are presented in a cursory and sometimes disjoined manner. However, like a good thesis, it is well-cited and documented. There is a solid range of source material that an interested reader can mine.

Many of the arguments and data presented reflect past studies on Caspian energy security. Gurbanov updates these to include the impact of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—significant events in the eyes of the Caspian nations, even if the nations themselves are not directly involved in either. The extent to which the Caspian states can react and adjust to these events is important to the author. In the end, the volume well represents how the region looks at energy diplomacy. Past studies of this topic tended to come from external nations that did not take regional perspectives into account. Gurbanov succeeds in presenting such a Caspian-centric view.