The US and Kazakhstan should move quickly to deepen relationships in levels beyond oil and gas, a panel of industry experts agreed Sept. 8 at a discussion at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
The group's observations came as SAIS's Central Asia-Caucasus Institute's Silk Road Studies Program released a report, "Looking Forward: Kazakhstan and the United States," by three Kazak and three US scholars.
The report's recommendations included signing a strategic partnership charter between the two countries and intensifying specific working groups' efforts; increasing cooperation in defense and security; removing impediments to US investment in Kazakhstan, and campaigning to foster such investments; and expanding country-to-country contacts in and out of government in the areas of human rights, rule of law, and democratization.
Key questions include Kazakhstan's hope to join the World Trade Organization now that it's part of the Eurasian Economic Union; US attention toward Central Asia with the country's pending January 2015 withdrawal from Afghanistan; and regional integration's implications for Kazakhstan's foreign policy that emphasizes balanced relationships with several countries, the panelists said.
US Central Asian policies should deal less with military, and more with economic and social issues, suggested Askar Nursha, a fellow at the Institute of World Economy and Politics. "We still need the US to play a geopolitical role," he said.
"Central Asia today features more actors whose interests collide than at any time in history," observed S. Enders Wimbush, principal at StrateVarious LLC in Washington. "Short of a series of security and economic protocols, there's a strong potential for surprises."
Significant progress
The US must build strong relations with all the countries there, or risk incursions by larger border nations, notably Russia and China, Wimbush said. Kazakhstan is a good place to start because it has made significant progress since the former Soviet Union's collapse in the early 1990s, the panelists said.
It has diversified the countries with which it has partnerships as it has developed its oil and gas resources. CACI Chairman S. Frederick Starr said timing was a key factor, but much more work needs to be done.
"There have been too many relationships where a contract hasn't been a contract or hasn't been enforced," Starr noted, adding that Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev has worked hard on this problem. "There has to be more certainty and less caprice if Kazakhstan expects to have strong relationships with Western and Chinese investors. The report is very blunt on this point," he said.
CACI Director Svante E. Cornell, meanwhile, said, "The US policy focus emphasizing first energy, then military interests has faded. That leaves security and human rights, where there hasn't been much US interest so far."