Connectivity

Central Asian leaders have been busy the last month, forging new ties in a changing geopolitical landscape. The presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan travelled to the White House to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in the C5+1 format. The format, established in 2015, aims to deepen U.S. collaboration with Central Asia, emphasising security and economic cooperation. The U.S. is not the only power looking to maintain its influence in the region. The European Union, Russia, China, and increasingly, India, have all shown their interest in securing economic cooperation and inking energy and trade deals, recognising Central Asia’s strategic position as a key energy and transfer hub situated between East and West. Central Asian states are keenly aware of their leverage and have not only engaged in multi-lateral diplomacy with all of the aforementioned external actors but also adopted a pragmatic regional approach to increase cooperation amongst themselves and taken concrete steps to foster a more unified ‘Central Asian Community’. This was evident by last weekend’s Seventh Consultative Meeting of Heads of State, also known as the C5, where Central Asian leaders officially admitted Azerbaijan as a full member, effectively transforming it into the C6. However, although Central Asia has the unique opportunity to multilaterally engage with all of the world’s biggest economic and security powers, while continuing to shape regional politics and cooperation on its own terms, new security and economic issues are arising that may well reshape Central Asian states’ connections to external actors and potentially strain intra-regional relations. (Read the full commentary by clicking on the picture).