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.
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.
Certainly, the Uzbekistan electorate—raised on centuries of khanate and Persian rule followed by Imperial Russian colonization and then Soviet absorption—approach democracy differently than those in Western Europe.
Society there may take time to polarize into Western-style debates over policy options and philosophies. Still, it is progressing along a path of consensus, and Uzbekistanis have made it clear that they are relishing their significant gains in wealth, the removal of official corruption, and the new mobility of education.
All that may be incidental. What was strategically significant—apart from the paternalistic qualification by the OSCE of the July 9 election—was the fact that the West, and particularly the United States, failed to pay attention to the installation of Mr. Mirziyoyev, who has been a staunch ally of the West, for a new seven-year term in office. But at the same time, the Biden administration has warmed to the leftist government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, which has never followed the paths of transparent elections and anti-corruption that Uzbekistan has followed.
Yes, Venezuela is important strategically to the United States, even though the United States has walked away from the earlier paternalistic domination of the Western Hemisphere that was embodied by the Monroe Doctrine. And since then, South America and the Caribbean have been co-opted into a pro-China framework. But Venezuela, particularly on its own, is not as strategically critical to the United States or Western position as is Central Asia.
The Central Asian bloc of states represents a major area of international access to the Eurasian landmass between China and Russia.
Perhaps a significant perspective on the situation could be expressed by the reality that China (along with Russia and Iran) has made strategic inroads into the Americas, which is geopolitically critical to the United States. But the United States has abandoned the post-Cold War opening to make strategic inroads into the Eurasian heartland so critical to China and Russia.
How are the Central Asian states expected to respond to this situation?
Communist China’s attempts to gain influence over the former Russia/Soviet-controlled states have been only marginally successful. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s May 2023 “summit” of Central Asian leaders in Xi’an, China, offered the region the possibility of only a marginal improvement in bilateral trade with China and some modest infrastructural investments.
Russia, by contrast, has been attempting to calm the region back into friendship with Moscow. This has included the engagement of Central Asian states in the new Russian-controlled International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which has already created a viable road, rail, riverine, and trans-Caspian logistical network from St. Petersburg, on the Baltic Sea, down to the Indian Ocean on Iran’s Baluchistan coast at the Strait of Hormuz.
Moscow has been careful not to hint at any desire for the reincorporation of Central Asia into the Russian Federation. And if it maintains this posture, it might successfully woo Central Asian leaders who could be forced to give up on the West.
