There are both great risks and extraordinary opportunities inherent in the need to widen and deepen economic prosperity, extend democratic human rights, and overcome provocative threats to regional or even global security. Continued globalization in economics and culture will have disproportionately significant implications for the further transformation of this region. Many of these societies are still in the earliest phases of political and economic transformation with no history of democratic governance or free enterprise. Many are new states. The very role of the nation state is evolving in ways that entrenched leaders often find threatening.
Governments increasingly find themselves incapable of managing many of the challenges they face.
These challenges demand new leadership, new institutions and new patterns of cooperation between the public, private and NGO sectors in the region. There is both compelling need and immense opportunity for the EWI to assist current and future Eurasian leaders with these profound challenges, while helping to avert conflict and foster deeper cooperation in this strategically important region. In order to succeed in this third era, we must continue to transform the Institute. We will apply our proven core competencies, thought leadership, networking and back channel brokering, but in ways appropriate to the region. We will continue to move to become a bi-lingual organization, working and publishing in Russian and English.