341 27 CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA An overview of sof power prospective (section overview) Dalbir Ahlawat Central Asia: mapping sof power The soft power domain of the Central Asian region encompassing Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan was pioneered by Russia in the post-Soviet era. Russia’s need for augmenting and exercising soft power cannot be gain- said given its perceived challenges in the wake of the ‘implosion’. Of them, the most crit- ical, admittedly, was US unilateralism in eastern Europe. The policy measures it initiated to meet these challenges, according to Vladimir Putin (2012), entail a “matrix of tools and methods … by exerting information and other levers of infuence”. Joseph Nye developed the concept of soft power in the specifc context of the western liberal framework. However, for a big power like Russia the basic source of its strength was reposed not in democratic governance, human rights protection, liberal economy and separation of religion and state but in multi-models of democracy that proffer a kind of global humanistic perspective having bearing on humanism, progress and human spirit. Furthermore, Russia considers the role of Orthodox Church as central to governance. Thus ‘moral politics’ carries more soft power than any form of western liberal paradigm. To give credence to soft power, Russia constituted the Russkiy Mir Foundation (2014) to strengthen sovereign democracy as well as cross-cultural loyalty with those who share Russia’s sense of honour and spiritual freedom; it also created the Rossotrudnichestvo to promote humanitarian cooperation with foreign countries and strengthen its network with compatriots living overseas. Moscow also developed a mass media network to nur- ture the ‘historic unity of people’ as well as to refect the ‘objective reality’ of Russia’s vision and mission. Furthermore, the Russian International Affairs Council (2015) de- veloped coherency between the government, business and civil society. The term ‘soft power’ formally entered the Russian political lexicon in 2010 but impetus was added by the 2013 Foreign Policy Concept (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013) in which soft power was defned as “a comprehensive toolkit for achieving foreign policy objectives building on civil society potential”. In contrast with restrictions on entering the EU, a visa-free mobility within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has been initiated for citizens of member states. Russia attracts around three million workers from the CIS, in addition to 10–12 million illegal