Delineation of an Optimal Security Perspective for the Caspian Region

The security-based futurology of political units is a type of futurology focusing on geographic areas to assess their security status in the future. The Caspian region as one of the regions facing various factors has gained geopolitical significance, has a wide range of probable futures. The operational objective of this study is to identify the criteria affecting the security of this region and its final objective is to delineate an optimal security-based future for the region through a future study approach. It is a qualitative case study being formulated based on some qualitative and quantitative models and the relevant literature is used as the basis for classifying security standards into six groups of military, economic, spatial, sociocultural, political and environmental. the results were used to present 18 criteria of this region security. Then, 26 questionnaires were distributed among a group of faculty members of geopolitics from the universities of Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The collected data were analyzed using the combined mean TOPSIS method and key criteria of the Caspian region security were extracted. The findings indicated that the three key criteria of joint military and weapons investment, commercial relations and human development as the most critical geopolitical criteria of security in this region formed eight security scenarios and finally the scenario based on ‘regional joint military and weapons investment, free trade, and the homogeneous human development’ with higher scores were introduced as the criterion for the delineation of security perspective for the leaders of countries in this region.