HIKMA SUMMIT
OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
 

In recent years international attention has focused increasingly on the rich natural resources of the region, present abundantly in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and the strategic value of the region, at the middle of the Eurasian landmass, which is also still relatively unconnected from the global trade network. This caused a proliferation of investment plans for the region, with the most notable being the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced by China in 2013. Russian military aggression in Ukraine added two elements of interest, one being a general perception of weakened Russian control as opportunity for influence, as stated for example in the EU parliament resolution of the 17 January 2024, and the other being the new role of some of these states, like Kyrgyzstan, as transit countries of sanctioned goods from the EU to Russia.

In this article I will write of the new central Asian connectivity projects, local agency, and the main two frames in which the region is viewed in both the east and west: The “New Silk Road” and the “New Great Game”.

Shaking off the soviet past

The impact of the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent of the Tsarist Empire, is visible in many ways: the borders are the ones of the former SSRs, Russian is the lingua franca and in some areas the main language, the ethnic makeup of the region has been modified through forced population transfers under Stalin, Soviet architecture is omnipresent in cities and towns, where the occasional Lenin statue still stands. Politically, the same people that held power in 1991 maintained it until long after: Islom Karimov, in Uzbekistan, reigned until its death in 2016, In Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev only resigned in 2019, while in Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov established one of the most totalitarian and personalistic governments on the planet, which continues well after his death in 2006.

However, in respect to international relations, the main consequence is that Russia has a deep influence in the region, both in terms of hard and soft power. Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan are in the Eurasian Union, the Russian economical integration project, and are part of its common market. The same countries, with the addition of Tajikistan, make up the central Asian part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Russia’s military alliance, together with Belarus and Armenia. The presence of a sizable Russian ethnic minority in Kazakhstan causes regular expansionist comments in Moscow and in the past toned down more autonomous voices in the area. In Kirghiz main cities Russian is the most spoken language, and the country recently adopted a law on foreign agents that is largely modeled on a Russian law; an attempt to introduce a similar law in Georgia sparked protests earlier this year. Tajikistan hosts Russian military bases, present because of the occasional border clashes with its neighbours and the precarity of its internal situation. While Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are less integrated in Russian led international structures, together with the rest of Central Asia they depend heavily on trade with their large neighbour.

All these countries try to foster an alternative image of themselves as eternally Russian aligned countries. This is a process that is both internal and external. Internal in the sense of increased nationalism, with fostering the use of local languages instead of Russian, or with the punishment of statements that consider Russia as the only cause of development, as is the case for Kirghizstan. External in the sense that some of these countries, prominently Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, take a different position than Russia on international issues when the opportunity presents itself.

Investment rush

From 2013 to 2019, total foreign investment in central Asian countries totaled 378.2 billions of dollars, most of them (77%), directed to Kazakhstan. Starting with China, who established its BRI project in 2013, Many other countries have unveiled an investment strategy for the region, planning on capitalizing either on developing the region’s natural resources, from natural gas to gold, or on infrastructural development, both physical and digital. While many countries have their own development plans in the region, including the USA, India and Turkey, I will focus on the main 3 investors in the region: China, Russia and EU countries.

In terms of size of FDI, EU countries lead with 40% of investment, with China and Russia tied behind them. However Chinese influence is much greater than the size of the investment: it is a significant importer of natural resources, especially from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and its investment is linked to a unitary geopolitical project, the BRI. Central Asia is a key element of the Belt part, a new system of roads and railroads on an east-west axis, to increase connectivity across Eurasia and ease goods flow from China to Europe. It is an integral part of Chinese Foreign policy, and as Alicia García-Herrero, an economist from Bruegel points out, a way to deal with an overcapacity problem in China, mainly affecting the building sector.

EU countries are perceived as secondary, because of a tendency of western investment to be tied to transparency conditions, which are not generally a requirement for Russia and China, and the fact that there was no unitary action on a continental level that changed the EU perception as a “payer not a player”. The EU’s response to this second problem, and in general to the BRI project, is the Global Gateway project, which aims to invest in infrastructure and energy across the world, including Central Asia. The aim of Global Gateway consists in increasing the EU’s influence and – in the case of Central Asia – countering Russian presence, as the same resolution cited in the introduction states.

The balancing act of local elites

China, the Eu and Russia’s increased interest in the area means that these actors all have political objectives, and, at the same time, Central Asian countries try to balance their position in this space of competition. Frederick Starr, scholar of the region, sees 2016 as the watershed moment for local agency. In that year Shavkat Mirziyoyev was elected president of Uzbekistan and initiated a process of easing the flow of goods and people through the country. Together with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan fostered regional cooperation, with yearly meetings between heads of state and study of other regional cooperation models, like ASEAN or the Visegrad Group. While until then Central Asian countries relied exclusively on China to counter Russian influence, now they invited other countries to regional meetings, namely Japan and Turkey, and recently increasing cooperation in the EU. To not threaten Russia, Central Asian countries engage often in international organizations where Moscow is also present, like the UN.

The War in Ukraine further reduced the Russian grip on the region. This was used not only by other powers to exert influence over the region, but also by central Asian countries themselves to increase their agency in an international stage. Kazak and Uzbek leaders have used the opportunity to distance themselves from Russia: Kazak president Tokayev refused to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, while Uzbek foreign minister Kamilov spoke out in support of Ukrainian territorial identity. This increased friction with Russia was mitigated by acts of cooperation with their former colonial overlord, like Kazakhstan sharing information on Russian anti-war activists in the country. Kyrgyzstan has become a major hub for sanction evasion, given their status as member of the Eurasian Union, and exports from European countries have soared since 2022. Notably Kazakhstan has stated its aim to comply with EU guidelines on the matter.

Silk road and the great game: The past as the future?

There are two main frames through which the region is seen: as the ground of a new Great Game or/and as a new Silk Road. The Great Game concept was coined by British officer Arthur Conolly in the 19thcentury, to look the region as the field of competition between the Russian and British Empires. The Former expanded southwards to possibly threaten British India, creating a century long tug of war in the region between the two superpowers, made more often of subterfuge and diplomacy than military conflict. The second refers to the system of trade routes that generally is understood as connecting China and Europe from the classical age to the late Middle Ages, with trade goods flowing between the two regions. These historical examples, of competition in the first case and cooperation in the second case, are widely used to describe connectivity and political influencing in the region in both the West and China. This can be seen in academia, journalism and most notably in speeches and resolutions of governments and parliaments.

These views, as well as their original examples, underscore local agency greatly. In the 19th century British Russian competition was used by local khanates to expand their own influence over the region, shifting allegiance to suit their needs. The understanding we have of Silk Road is an even greater misconception, treating the land where it occurred as just the middle ground between Europe and China. As Frederck Starr argues in “Lost Enlightment: Central Asia’s golden age from the Arab conquest to Tamerlane”, instead of a crossroad between civilization, the region was a crossroads civilization, made of cultural and religious influences from its bordering regions, with a powerful focus on trade and scientific innovation. With the Arab conquest this local open culture made the region the center of Arab science and literature production.

Together with the Russian approach to the region, that in contrast to the great game/silk road dichotomy emerges from a century of colonial control, these views risk of ignoring local aims and strategies, which doesn’t benefit neither outside powers nor Central Asians.