Has the West Abandoned Central Asia and Vice-Versa?

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kyrgyzstan's President Sadyr Japarov, Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon, Turkmenistan's President Serdar Berdymukhamedov, and Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev pose for a group photo during the China-Central Asia Summit in Xian, in China's northern Shaanxi Province, on May 19, 2023. Florence Lo/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

It was almost as if, by July 2023, the great opening had never occurred between “the West” and the states of Central Asia after they were freed in 1991 from a century of Soviet and Russian Empire domination.

It was not that the five core Central Asian states—Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Turkmenistan—had, by 2023, lost their zeal for such things as market economics, freedom from external domination, and the restoration of their historical cultural identities. Indeed, their determination to retain their gains has been profound.

But there has been a realization that the United States—once the great icon of hope as a strategic partner of the regional states—had walked away from the region. And that the European Union (EU) was proving ineffective in helping the region maintain its sovereignty in the face of Russian attempts to revive regional dominance, alongside attempts by China to gain influence.

During the Trump administration, the United States did grasp the region’s strategic importance and worked discreetly to support it. That effort died away during the subsequent Biden administration. The EU, which built strong links with Central Asia, became increasingly seen in the region as good for investment and trade but failed to have any comprehension of what was necessary for the bloc of five states to sustain sovereignty in the face of the two great neighbors, Russia and China.

Uzbekistan’s presidential election on July 9 proved the point. The election saw a turnout of 79.88 percent of the 19,593,838 registered voters, and incumbent President Shavkat Mirziyoyev won 87.71 percent of that vote, with the nearest of his three rivals, Robakhon Makhmudova of the Adolat (Justice) Social Democratic Party, winning 4.47 percent of the votes.

The key states that congratulated Uzbekistan on the outcome of the election were China and Russia and not the United States or the EU. Indeed, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has a poor track record for anything other than criticism—it significantly delayed for decades a resolution of the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, for example—said that the election was “technically well prepared but lacked genuine competition.”

What did the OSCE expect?

The referendum that prefaced the presidential election was indeed specifically a plan to expand the presidency of Mr. Mirziyoyev, who has been overwhelmingly popular among the population. And while that offends Western sensibilities regarding personality-driven political structures, even the Uzbekistani opposition parties and candidates supported Mr. Mirziyoyev’s policies, which have led to the ever-expanding freedoms and safeguards that he introduced following his accession to the presidency in 2016.

Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev speaks during an Extraordinary Summit of the Heads of State of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), in Ankara, on March 16, 2023. Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images