As the countries enter the twenty-first century and are in their second decade of behaving as individual states, it is apparent that we need to modify our analytical approaches to understand how these states perceive their strategic interests. We need to re-evaluate how their political leaders assess threats to their countries’ security. We need to investigate how external influences from great and regional powers—Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Europe, and the United States—are shaping the security landscape both within the Eurasian states and across regional boundaries. We also need to anticipate how the deployment of U.S. and other national forces on the territories of fragile states in the Caucasus and Central Asia, to fight the global war on terror, may produce unintended consequences—politically, economically, and socially—for longer-term regional stability. This first volume of the series examines “Strategic Security Dilemmas in the Caucasus and Central Asia.” Our authors presented papers at the Caspian Sea Basin Security conference held in Seattle in April 2003. Their research attempts to measure how current security dilemmas affect the future stability of the states situated at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The authors highlight the tragedy of September 11, 2001, as the principal catalyst for redefining the strategic significance of the Caucasus and Central Asia.