ALMATY, Kazakhstan — A diplomat before entering politics, Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has mastered the art of delivering timely messages while making his audience reflect on the meaning of those messages.
His call last week for greater defense cooperation among Central Asian countries is a case in point.
The proposal did not go unnoticed by pro-Kremlin commentators in Russia, who consider Central Asian security to be within their country's prerogative interests, despite the war in Ukraine.
The plan also drew enthusiastic support from pro-government media in Azerbaijan, which last month took part in rare military drills in western Kazakhstan with Central Asian states without Russian involvement.
But were Tokayev's words more than just pretense?
“Since the start of the Ukraine war, Central Asia has had the opportunity to reinvent itself in a comfortable geopolitical space,” said Luca Ancheschi, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
“They are trying to say that they are not on Russia's side in Ukraine, like Belarus, but they are not on the Ukrainian side either. They have ties to the West, but they are not pro-Western,” Ancheski told RFE/RL.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and Kazakhstan's President Tokayev clashed over the Ukraine war at the 2022 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June.
“But as the war continues and discussions over secondary sanctions grow, governments in the region may find this space shrinking somewhat.”
This is why there is all the more reason to emphasize regional integration from a Central Asian perspective, which is exactly what Tokayev did in his op-ed in the preface to the Sixth Consultation of Heads of Central Asian Countries held in Astana on August 9.
At the same time, “efforts towards integration within Central Asia are often very vague in detail and sometimes amount to little more than empty rhetoric,” Ancheschi argued.
A “regional security system” without Russia?
The main impetus for increased cooperation in Central Asia comes from Uzbekistan, the region's most populous country and the only one that shares borders with every country in the region.
Under the country's first president, Islam Karimov, Tashkent viewed many of its neighbors as a nuisance to be kept at bay, but his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, saw new opportunities for trade and diplomatic ties when he came to power in 2016.
In an August 14 article on the issue, Abdulaziz Komilov, a former Uzbek foreign minister and special assistant to the president for foreign policy, wrote that Uzbekistan has “assumed special responsibility for the future of Central Asia by completely abandoning its outdated approach to building relations with its neighbors.”
That's about as far as Uzbek officials will go in criticizing the late Karimov.
Arguably, however, Uzbekistan’s relations with its Central Asian neighbors have improved under Mirziyoyev’s administration, with the first five-nation summit, now held annually, taking place in 2018.
At the same time, countries in the region have traditionally had stronger economic and political ties with China and Russia than with the rest of the region.
So Tokayev's editorial on strengthening regional ties, published in the state-run Kazakhstan newspaper Pravda, titled “Central Asian Renaissance: Towards Sustainable Development and Prosperity”, was bound to raise some eyebrows.
This is because Tokayev not only emphasized Central Asia's unique history and economic potential, but also called for “defense and security cooperation” and the “establishment of a regional security architecture” that would include an “inventory of security risks” to Central Asia.
Naturally, these were the parts of the editorial that caught the attention of Russian commentators, with the author indirectly referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine in terms of instability on the region’s borders.
For Sergei Mardan, a pro-Kremlin nationalist TV and radio personality, Tokayev's comments show that Kazakhstan has lost confidence in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led military alliance that includes the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Mardan argued that the CSTO saved President Tokayev and his regime from the “Manvetz Revolution,” short for devastating uprisings that took place in Kazakhstan in January 2022 that left more than 230 people dead and prompted intervention by Russian-led CSTO peacekeeping forces.
Kazakhstan's President Tokayev (left) welcomes Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Astana on August 8.
By using the word “manbets,” Mardan was using a derogatory term for rural Kazakhs that dates back to the Soviet era.
But Mardan told his roughly 240,000 followers on Telegram that “the idea of forming a defense alliance in Central Asia is not feasible.”
“Each republic has its own interests and many border issues remain unresolved,” he said.
Baku Madness
“Defensive alliance” is not the exact term Tokayev used, though he made it clear in the article that he supports Central Asian states joining various groups, including the CSTO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
However, the idea of a Central Asian NATO was also featured in other Russian commentary on the Kazakhstan president's article.
In an August 12 column in the Asia-focused Vostochny Express newspaper titled “Mates and Ships: ‘Central Asian Defense Union’ Smells of British Pound Sterling and Delusion,” author Fyodor Kirsanov argued that the supposed proposal for a new regional bloc likely originated with British intelligence agency MI6.
“As expected, the idea of integration was proposed by Tokayev, who has recently donned the toga of a political thinker,” Kirsanov wrote.
“Yes, there is a clear red fox tail sticking out from under the top of the head, but that's a small detail,” he added.
Additionally, the Russia-focused YouTube channel Khod Mysley (with over 450,000 subscribers) questioned whether Tokayev was following Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who “under the Anglo-Saxon leadership is slowly but surely turning Armenia from a friend to an enemy of Russia.”
Kazakhstan has grown accustomed to such hostile Russian rhetoric, having not supported Russia's 2022 invasion, which came just one month after the historic upheaval known as “Bloody January.”
But if Tokayev's thoughts were unpopular in Russia, they were praised in Baku by Khatchin, a private media outlet often seen as having close ties to hardline Azerbaijani regime members.
In an article about Tokayev's proposal, Hakkin journalist Zukra Novruzova described the Kazakh leader as “a highly experienced diplomat, far superior to his colleagues in the Russian Foreign Ministry.”
Novruzova argued that Tokayev's concerns were “completely logical” given Russia's militaristic tendencies and the uncertainty of how and when the Ukraine war would end.
“All developments show that the Kremlin elite has absolutely no interest in Russia's peaceful development and economic recovery,” Novruzova said. “In other words, under the current regime, the Kremlin will not get back on a peaceful track. The machine of state aggression has been set in motion,” she wrote.
The view from Baku becomes even more interesting when one takes into account both the “Birleschik-2024” military exercises involving Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in western Kazakhstan last month, and smaller naval exercises involving Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea region of Baku last year.
Azerbaijan, which shares ethnic Turkish heritage with four of the five Central Asian countries, has become the object of admiration from some analysts in the region since Turkey-allied Baku militarily seized the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia, Russia's nominal partner.
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev also attended the Central Asian Summit in Astana, the only head of state from outside the region to attend.
However, Baku-based political analyst Fuad Shahbazov argues that no one is actually calling for a new Eurasian military alliance at this point.
“Azerbaijan believes that deepening ties with Central Asia gives it more room to maneuver,” Shahbazov said, noting that Baku is pursuing similar efforts with other countries to counter its deteriorating ties with the West and its traditionally complicated relationship with Russia.
But in the longer term, analysts say Azerbaijan sees Central Asia more in terms of trade than security, particularly the Central Corridor – a 6,500-kilometer trade route that bypasses Russia and connects China to Europe through Central Asia and the Caucasus.
“As for Kazakhstan, (Baku's) interests lie in energy and logistics,” Shabazov told RFE/RL.
