Central Asia today has the attention of Washington, Beijing, Moscow and Brussels, yet behind the multibillion-dollar deals signed on paper in front of the cameras, there are no real projects to be seen.
It looks as if the region is using the growing interest of the major powers, weaving garlands of fine words and assurances, while in practice trading in empty sweet wrappers.
Mezon Central spoke to Temur Umarov, an expert at the Carnegie centre in Berlin, about why the shift in the political climate in the United States will not cost Central Asia Washington’s attention, how far China’s economic influence has gone, and why talk of the great powers dividing up the region is out of touch with today’s reality.
— The Democrats have taken Congress in the United States. Does this mean a change in the direction of Washington’s foreign policy towards Central Asia? Will the region once again end up on the periphery of American interests?
— I fully understand why the question arises, and your logic seems convincing. As long as Donald Trump held full power in the United States, including control over Congress, he could do practically anything he wanted.
In Central Asia, however, the 47th president pursued not so much the interests of the state he governs as his own, or to be more precise, his family’s. Some of the projects that have appeared in the region recently confirm this.
Temur Umarov
So it is quite reasonable to assume that under pressure from Congress, Trump will scale back his hyperactivity in the region and Central Asia will return to its former state, when nobody was particularly interested in it. But in my view, that somewhat simplifies what we are seeing in relations between the United States and Central Asia. It would be wrong to put everything down to the Trump effect, and to Trump’s second term at that.
— Why?
— Central Asia’s appeal lies in the region itself. The region has changed its approach to foreign policy and the way it positions itself in the world.
Think back to Joe Biden’s presidency and how his administration built its relations with Central Asia. We will find many similarities with the way Trump and his team deal with the region today.
Yes, there is the family aspect of the occupant of the Oval Office, and this is one of the risks the Central Asian countries took on when they placed a big bet on the American president’s relatives. Now the Democrats, who have taken Congress, can raise all these questions and open inquiries into conflicts of interest and investment projects.
Temur Umarov
In particular, those in Kazakhstan involving Trump’s children. How far did these projects meet the transparency requirements for American business investment? Accordingly, many initiatives that Central Asia saw as evidence of a breakthrough in relations with America could later turn into a trap and undermine trust and long-term relations between the United States and the countries of the region.
But I would not lean towards catastrophic scenarios. Central Asia has shown that it can work quite flexibly with any administration, whether traditional Democrats led by Biden or radical MAGA Republicans in the person of Trump and his supporters. Central Asia will be able to adapt to any administration.
All the more so because growing conflict in the world opens up additional opportunities for countries that sit between two or three different camps. It allows them to play where the interests of the major powers intersect, to find their niche and to define their own place in the world. Central Asia has shown this successfully in recent years.
Central Asia is drawing closer not only to Washington but to all the other major players too: China, Russia, the European Union. We see the region building contacts even with countries that were not particularly active here before.
So it is not only about the Trump administration and its position in the United States. It is that Central Asia itself has changed.
— But not when it comes to China. Beijing’s position is growing exponentially, and every country is actively attracting Chinese money. Uzbekistan in particular. China’s excessive presence in the region resembles economic expansion. Or does it not?
— Today there are practically no countries left in the world that do not depend on China economically. All states, including developed ones, are so closely tied to the Chinese economy that they can no longer give it up. That includes the United States and the European Union.
More than 100 countries list China among their main economic partners. This is a reality that everyone has to recognise and accept, and then build their policies around their own financial capacity.
As for Uzbekistan, what stands out first of all is the so-called low base effect. Until 2016 Uzbekistan was very cautious about attracting foreign investors. In trade, the country generally gave priority to developing domestic producers. But this policy was pursued in order to strengthen domestic monopolies linked to the political elites. That is why protectionism has always been one of the foundations of the Uzbek economy.
When Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power, he carried out reforms and opened the Uzbek economy to foreign investors, including Chinese ones. And China, seizing the window of opportunity, quickly became the main contender for economic influence in the country. In principle, China is quite active across the region. Beijing has something to offer, and Uzbekistan, like the other Central Asian countries, has something to consume, given its fast-growing market. The question is how far the states of the region, Uzbekistan among them, will manage to balance the growing Chinese presence with other players. So far, it seems to me, Tashkent has managed to manoeuvre. Unlike, say, Kazakhstan.
We see that one of the sectors developing very quickly thanks to Chinese investment is green energy. The Chinese are building solar power plants and putting up wind turbines. But in Uzbekistan they have to cooperate with Saudi investors among others, and develop together the ACWA Power project, the largest solar energy project in the region.
In Kazakhstan, by contrast, the Chinese carry out such projects on their own, on the basis of tied loans. This means that you get a loan at a reduced rate, but you are obliged to use only Chinese contractors to carry it out.
In Uzbekistan this practice is less widespread. Yes, China is becoming the main creditor. But besides China there is also the World Bank, which provides comparable volumes of loans, and in some sectors more.
Besides, Uzbekistan has not yet reached the threshold of Chinese loans relative to public debt that Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have already crossed. So Tashkent can take on additional loans and still feel relatively comfortable. Repaying them does not push the country into default. The Uzbek economy is growing, and the volume of loans has not yet crossed the danger line.
So China’s presence in Uzbekistan is visibly increasing, but on the whole it remains on a manageable scale.
Temur Umarov
— An APEC summit is scheduled for mid-November. A three-way meeting of Beijing, Washington and Moscow is expected on its sidelines. Some Central Asian social media channels are already suggesting that Central Asia may come up on the agenda. Or are we not that interesting to the geopolitical players?
— A trilateral summit may well take place at APEC. China confirmed its participation just the other day. But believe me, Central Asia will not be discussed at that meeting. These three countries have a huge number of other issues they need to resolve. Each has its own. I think even the war in Ukraine will most likely not be discussed.
The idea that all the great powers of the world are getting together to discuss how to divide Central Asia among themselves looks, on the one hand, like a narrative that puts the region at the centre of the world. But in essence it is a colonial approach that was popular back in the 20th century. Experts of all kinds developed such schemes in their drawing rooms, including in the context of the Heartland theory. Today, however, this view is out of touch with reality.
Nobody is going to divide Central Asia. And Central Asia itself will not allow anyone to treat it as a bargaining chip. It is not a goat’s hide to be shared out. The region is a living organism that acts and makes decisions on its own.
Temur Umarov
— Does Central Asia as a region have a chance to gain its own agency and to interest partners not one by one but as a single community, as a full partner at the same negotiating table?
— It seems to me that many observers of Central Asia actually underestimate the level of agency the region already has. You mentioned the European Union as an example. But the European Union is not seen as an independent actor in international relations either, neither by China nor by the United States.
— Yes, I understand what you mean. Europe has practically been denied a say on Ukraine. Although the situation may change now that the Democrats have taken Congress.
— We are on the same page here, as the Americans say. But being fixated on one’s beloved self is a feature of the narcissistic thinking of great powers. They believe the whole world revolves around them and that all questions are decided exclusively in the Kremlin, the White House or Zhongnanhai. Nothing else matters.
This way of thinking is carried over to other regions too. We see it everywhere: the others, supposedly, have not yet gained enough strength and influence, and need to work out how to reach the point where they will be taken seriously.
But if we think in such categories, then we urgently need to look for access to nuclear weapons and, like North Korea, try to influence world politics with a nuclear club. That option exists.
However, as Iran has shown, you can try to create the impression that you have nuclear weapons, but then there is a high chance that someone will come for you. Or you can become like Israel. There are plenty of examples of how to build up muscle quickly.
But Central Asia chose a completely different path. There is an excellent book about this by Togzhan Kassenova. After all, in a parallel universe Kazakhstan would not have given up its nuclear weapons, and it would be very interesting to watch how events would have unfolded. The same goes for Ukraine, had it not handed its nuclear arsenal over to Russia. But that is a separate question.
When we talk about Central Asia’s influence, we underestimate the fact that the region has already gained agency and shapes the events that take place within it.
Look at the huge number of summits in the C5+1 format, at the visits by the region’s heads of state, who now travel the world as a group of five. This is an unprecedented level of involvement in interregional processes.
At the same time, nothing extraordinary is happening in Central Asia itself. There is no war by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, as in 2001. There are no American military bases, no collapse of the USSR to draw attention to the region. Yes, there is the war in Ukraine, but it is not taking place in Central Asia.
So our countries are attracting attention practically out of nothing, out of thin air. And this is happening for the first time in the region’s history. Many underestimate this fact, as well as the fact that the interest in Central Asia has, in essence, been built from nothing.
Temur Umarov
Yes, there are certain critical minerals and rare earth metals. But in reality we have not yet seen a single project in which outside players have actually started mining them. The multibillion-dollar project that Trump’s children are carrying out in Kazakhstan is still in its infancy. If we tried to photograph the development of the deposits now, we would get nothing, because that process simply does not exist.
So for now, Central Asia is selling air. It is a good diplomatic tool, showing that the region is not a raw-materials appendage but a flexible diplomatic actor that sells expectations and promises.
— Is that wise, pragmatic and subtle, in an Eastern way?
— Yes. Given the resources Central Asia has and its domestic political context, it is not the worst of all possible options.
— In your view, if a Democrat wins the US presidential election in two years’ time, will Central Asia’s political elites manage to build contact with him?
— I would not underestimate Central Asia’s flexibility and its ability to adapt to any White House administration. All the more so since the region is not on the list of US priorities and is unlikely to be on it in future. Accordingly, expectations here are lower. Nobody counts on any specific steps or a particular approach from one presidential team or another.
The same happened under Biden and is happening now under Trump. Discussions about critical minerals began under Biden. In other words, a pragmatic approach to the region was already visible then. Questions of democratisation and human rights receded into the background and were not raised at public meetings. American diplomats explained that they discussed these issues behind the scenes so as not to put their Central Asian partners in an awkward position.
In other words, all the trends we see today were already visible then. It is just that the Trump administration wants us to think that he was the one who opened up Central Asia for America and became the pioneer in the region. But that is not true at all. The C5+1 format has existed for ten years now. Even before it appeared, there was the TIFA format between the United States and Central Asia, which Washington promoted in the region in the 2000s.
Washington knows us well, and Central Asia has adapted to different American administrations more than once. It seems to me that today the initiative is being set by Central Asia itself, not by the White House.
Yes, the style changes, the people change, but there has never before been an administration that pushed the interests of its own family so persistently. This is the first time we have faced this. It is a feature of Trump’s policy. But others will come with their own features, and Central Asia will adapt to them too.
— And what about sanctions pressure?
— What about it? It was there and it remains. The restrictive measures are in force, even though Trump promises to lift them. Yes, checks will become stricter, but they were already strict in 2022 and 2023. I do not see any fundamentally new problem here that Central Asia would not be able to prepare for.