During the latter part of the 20th century, illegal drug production for Western markets has developed and consolidated in various parts of Asia. The near entirety of the heroin consumed in Europe originates in Afghanistan, with major individual and societal problems in the countries of consumption. However, the production and smuggling of heroin causes even worse problems in the production and transit countries. In the states along the smuggling routes, narcotics affect the general health conditions of the population, with severe diseases including HIV/AIDS as a result. It also contributes to crime and social conflicts, exacerbates corruption and threatens sovereignty, fuels extremism and terrorism, and plays an important role in civil wars.

The quest for long-term energy supplies is becoming a matter of increasing regional competition with secure access to oil and gas a matter of national strategic consideration. Energy-hungry economies in East and South Asia are highly dependent on imported oil and gas to fuel economic growth and are acting to secure long-term energy supplies. However, the environmental challenges related to climate change and human security, as well as rising energy costs, have affected how these Asian governments regard the use of conventional hydrocarbon energy resources. Meanwhile, Russia and the Central Asian states have a significant proportion of the world's primary energy resources and are looking for ways to increase such exports to expand and diversify into new markets in Asia and Europe.

The changes taking place in the region stretching from Turkey and the Caucasus to China have been so rapid that no country in the West or elsewhere was adequately prepared to deal with the region. American and European elites had little knowledge of the histories and cultures of the region's peoples, let alone of their languages. The newly independent states of Eurasia were not treated as something in the own right, but were subsumed under other headings, usually "post-Soviet", in spite of their highly distinctive and diverse nature. Afghanistan and Xinjiang, intimate parts of Central Asia for millennia, were sliced off and treated exclusively under the rubric of South Asia, or China, respectively. Although the divisions between the former Soviet states on the one hand and Turkey, China, and Afghanistan and South Asia on the other are rapidly giving way to common problems and solutions, western governments and international organizations typically retain the geographical divisions dating back to Soviet times.