by Svante E. Cornell

In August 2024, the leaders of Central Asian states met in Astana, Kazakhstan, for their sixth summit since 2018. This summit – at which regional leaders further committed to deepen regional cooperation – was an important development, indicating that Central Asian states are determined not to be pawns in rising great power competition.

BACKGROUND: Since the states of Central Asia gained independence three decades ago, a key question has been whether the region’s future will be determined by the countries of the region itself, or by outside powers. The decline of international norms in recent years is a decidedly unwelcome one for Central Asian states, which find themselves at the fulcrum of great power competition on the Eurasian continent. Dividing lines became stronger around them, and the region confronts the risk of coming under the domination of an emerging axis of revisionist powers consisting of Russia, China and Iran.

In recent years, the relationship among these three revisionist powers has become stronger. The growing coordination between Russia and China has been visible for the world to see, even though their relationship in Central Asia is more complex than it seems. Similarly, there has been a steadily expanding alignment between Russia and Iran. Iran’s active support for Russia’s war in Ukraine has brought the two powers closer, and led to heightened risks that coordination between them can expand to matters relating to Central Asia and the Caucasus. China and Iran have also increased their coordination, not least in circumventing U.S. sanctions. Beyond this, there has been increasing coordination between the three revisionist powers, including joint maritime drills in the Gulf of Oman, the latest in April 2024.

The extent of the trilateral axis between Russia, China and Iran has been subject to considerable debate. Some have correctly pointed out that it remains largely rhetorical and relies mainly on three bilateral relations. Still, the axis has the potential to strengthen, particularly if the U.S.-China relationship further deteriorates and a crisis in the Taiwan straits causes Beijing to turn with renewed interest to Russia and Iran.

It is to the good fortune of Greater Central Asia that it has so far been largely spared from the direct and military intervention of these revisionist powers. Still, the emergence of this new axis changes the parameters for the region, creating new elements of vulnerability and threatening to confront it with a fait accompli of being subsumed under this new axis.

In the face of these challenges, however, Central Asian states have maintained their independent approach to the world. They have shown that they are no longer “pawns” in a “Great Game,” or at the mercy of great powers. Quite to the contrary, states in the region are developing an ability to impact the region surrounding them, gaining sufficient power to assert their own priorities – not least strengthening cooperation among each other.

IMPLICATIONS: One of the most defining developments that has made this possible is the rise of Middle Powers in Central Asia. The first state to emerge as a Middle Power is Kazakhstan, which did so through a combination of its economic strength, foreign policy strategy, and multilateral initiatives; more recently, Uzbekistan is also emerging as a Middle Power.

The concept of Middle Powers is particularly relevant to Central Asia because the region lacks a functioning collective security mechanism. This is all the more concerning because of the size differential between regional states and surrounding powers – and the fluctuating relations among those surrounding powers further contributes to instability.

This instability makes the role of Middle Powers crucial in order to anchor Central Asian security. A Middle Power has the ability to impact, to some extent, the policy of great powers and stabilize the interaction among them in its region. It can raise the situation in the region to the attention of multilateral organizations and external powers. More importantly, a Middle Power can help organize neighboring states so that otherwise smaller and weaker states can band together and pool resources.

Kazakhstan began to emerge as the first Middle Power in greater Central Asia a decade or so ago. It did so for several reasons, which include both objective attributes as well as choices its leadership made. First, Kazakhstan’s economy is by far the most developed of the region. Second, it has taken a proactive approach to developing a foreign policy to handle the competition among great powers. Third, it is taking a leading role in promoting regional cooperation. Fourth, it plays a crucial role in the connectivity of the region. Fifth, Kazakhstan has gone beyond the region with international initiatives that cemented its role. Finally, its internal reforms make its status as a Middle Power increasingly sustainable.

The August 8 summit of Central Asian leaders is an example of how Kazakhstan exercises this role as a Middle Power. Ahead of the Summit, Kazakhstani leaders had indicated their efforts to “strengthen the region’s international subjectivity,” as leaders now term their effort to build regional institutions. At the Summit, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev commented that these meetings have “given regional cooperation a systematic, comprehensive and, above all, reliable character.”

Key to this success is also the increasingly tight cooperation between Kazakhstan and Central Asia’s most populous state, Uzbekistan. With the two larger states taking the lead, Central Asia has begun to resemble the Franco-German cooperation in post-war Europe that led to the process of European Integration.

CONCLUSIONS: The rise of Middle Powers in Central Asia has considerable implications. It should lead to a fundamental rethink in many quarters about how the Greater Central Asian region should be understood. Too often, the region is still viewed in terms of a “Great Game,” where large power compete for influence, while local states are seen as helpless and possibly hopeless satrapies that lack agency of their own. 

That description of the region is now not just inaccurate but misleading. Furthermore, for external forces – be it powers such as the EU, US or Japan, or international organizations – the emergence of Middle Powers in Greater Central Asia present an important opportunity. The strategies adopted by foreign states toward the region have yet to explicitly acknowledge the emergence of Middle Powers that can serve as key partners with which foreign powers can safeguard their interests in the region.

The United States and EU both developed strategy documents toward Central Asia in the late 2010s. These strategies took a step toward acknowledging the regional states as subjects rather than objects of international relations. Events since then have largely made these strategies obsolete. As these strategies are revised, it is imperative that they reflect the new reality in the region – the emergence of Middle Powers that have considerable agency in helping shape their region for the future.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Svante E. Cornell is Research Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, Joint Center.