Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Central Asian states have never experienced anything like the year 2022.
Moscow had every opportunity to make the Central Asian nations gravitate toward it of their own accord. Yet now Russian soft power in Central Asia is dissipating before our eyes.
The marriage of material gifts to interpersonal elite social bonds is a distinctive feature of China’s approach to Central Asia—one that resonates with local traditions and practices. This characteristic contrasts starkly with the approach preferred by the transatlantic West, which has tended to anchor its engagement with Central Asia in political norms and principles.
Concerns and public resentment over the influx of Russians cannot be seen any other way than through the prism of the long colonial history between the Central Asian states and the Russian (and later Soviet) empire.
As more Russians flee to neighboring countries and more nationals of those countries go to fight in Ukraine, their governments will find it increasingly difficult to ignore these developments.
Central Asia is very interested in finding new alternatives and China is the best alternative.
The leaders of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan met in the ancient Silk Route city of Samarkand on September 16 for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the red lines in its relationship with Russia have been unclear for Kazakhstan. If earlier Kazakhstan holding military drills with NATO would not have angered Russia, now Moscow sees itself as being at war with the West and may act much more aggressively.
The war in Ukraine has enabled Kazakhstan’s Tokayev to reinvent himself as a truly independent figure, no longer reliant on either his predecessor Nazarbayev or Russia’s Putin. Now Tokayev hopes to cement this status by securing a popular mandate to rule.
In a complex, changing, and increasingly contested world, the Carnegie Endowment generates strategic ideas and independent analysis, supports diplomacy, and trains the next generation of international scholar-practitioners to help countries and institutions take on the most difficult global problems and safeguard peace. Join our mailing list to become part of our network of more than 150 scholars in 20 countries.
Sign up to receive emails from Carnegie!