At the end of December 2022, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev paid a two-day visit to Uzbekistan. Tokayev and Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed two documents: the Treaty on Allied Relations and the Treaty on the Demarcation of the Kazakh-Uzbek State Border. Political scientist Maxim Kaznacheev spoke about the possible consequences of these events in an interview with Ia-center.ru.
- What does the agreement on allied relations between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan change in reality?
- There is little pragmatism in the new treaty, which may indicate the predominantly informational purposes of its appearance. What can be distinguished in essence:
• The High Contracting Parties agreed to hold consultations in the event of a military threat from third countries. But they did not take on strict obligations of military support;
• There is an understanding of the need to reconstruct and expand the transport infrastructure linking the countries. But there is no understanding of what investment sources to do this from;
• The desire to create cross-border industrial clusters is indicated (as if someone prevented this from being done before);
• Kazakhstan has confirmed its desire to import Uzbek agricultural products, as it has successfully destroyed its own agriculture.
These areas of cooperation are formalized in the form of 15 additional agreements between relevant departments. Accordingly, the rest of the "road map" of interaction will still be refined and specified at the level of ministries.
By and large, we can say that the entire visit of President Tokayev was just a "synchronization of watches" after the last early presidential elections. Astana reaffirmed its earlier commitments (as part of the 2021 declaration) to Tashkent as a new regional leader.
- Is the alliance agreement a separate element or part of a large and new system of relations that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are now building?
- Global geostrategic transformations have begun in the world, which will continue for another one and a half to two decades. Astana and Tashkent in this process are objects, not subjects of influence. Against this background, they are trying to find the most optimal strategy for interacting with global and regional players.
The main burden that the contract bears is informational and ideological. Firstly, this is a domestic political message to the population that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are something of themselves. This is indicated by an artificial wave of excitement in the pro-government propaganda media of the two countries that the alliance agreement will have almost worldwide significance. Although, as we have seen, if we turn to the real content of the treaty, nothing of the kind follows from it.
Secondly, in the foreign policy aspect, this agreement is an attempt to strengthen its negotiating positions with real geopolitical subjects. Several interpretations can be offered on how these negotiating positions could be improved:
1. Participating countries are trying to raise their geopolitical status for external players interested in working with Central Asia. Then, relying on this status, both Astana and Tashkent get an opportunity for more promising bargaining with potential "geopolitical buyers".
2. The participating countries do not want a deeper involvement in extra-regional geopolitical projects - neither in the EAEU, nor in the SCO, nor in the UTC. Therefore, they are trying to distance themselves from their earlier integration obligations.
3. A regional union may be aimed at facilitating interaction with the West. The US strategy for the region clearly indicates the need to counter all geopolitical integration projects being implemented by Moscow and Beijing. Therefore, the creation of an alliance may be an offer to Washington from Astana and Tashkent to "invest" in counteracting China and Russia.
In essence, we see the geopolitical "offer" that Astana and Tashkent offer to global players. A kind of auction where you can "buy two for the price of one."
- What's next: an agreement, then further deepening of integration? Is it possible to create a common army, lift restrictions on the movement of goods and people across the border, unify legislation?
- The first and most important point: who will be the sponsor of this regional union? There should be a country that pays (directly or indirectly) for all these integration initiatives. In other projects, such sponsors are clearly defined: EAEU - Russia, SCO - China, UTC - Turkey.
They invest in projects - they receive the main bonuses. A similar actor should be in the regional union of Astana and Tashkent. So far, neither side is "pulling" a separate regional integration project. Therefore, I repeat, there is a high probability that we are dealing with a project “for sale” to larger players. And already this larger player will determine where the integration will go.
By the way, the situation is similar with other Central Asian foreign policy initiatives - for example, the CICA, which was decided to be transformed into a permanent organization.
Who will pay for this project? China - no, it already has the SCO and the One Belt - One Road project. Moscow is also not interested in it - Russia has designated only the post-Soviet space as a priority sphere of geopolitical influence. Turkey focuses only on the integration of the Turkic states and territories, and therefore is also not interested in the CICA project. The situation is similar with Iran, India, Saudi Arabia - all these countries are implementing their own foreign policy projects.
Therefore, the regional union of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will become tangible and substantive when the final beneficiary is determined, ready to invest in the project.
- How likely is it that several more countries of the region will join this union?
- Exactly as far as they will see economic benefits from participation in such an association.
The remaining countries of the region - Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan - neither together nor separately will be able to balance Tashkent and Astana. They have no regional political ambitions. Therefore, the only meaning of participation in the union is to receive external support, investments in the form of loans or cheap hydrocarbons (or both).
In principle, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have been participating in other integration associations for a long time only for the sake of such a donation. And Turkmenistan, until last year, was a kind of “spherical horse in a vacuum” in terms of regional integration. The change of the president will certainly lead to a change in foreign policy priorities. But whether Serdar Berdimuhamedov will go for expanding the country's participation in Central Asian integration is a big question.
Most likely, if the countries - initiators of the regional union fail to find a solvent external investor, then other countries of the region will prefer to work according to already worked out schemes and projects with China, Russia and Turkey.
- You say that by this union, by some joint steps, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are striving to strengthen their negotiating positions. Which parties in the geopolitical landscape might be interested in such a proposal?
- External global and regional centers of power - the United States, China, Russia and Turkey (it is necessary to take into account the factor of Britain, which is behind all Ankara's geopolitical projects oriented towards the post-Soviet space).
A very important point: how the initiative of the regional union of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan "fits" into existing regional projects.
There will be no problems with the SCO - both countries participate in it anyway. As for the EAEU, Uzbekistan still has observer status and is in no hurry to force full membership. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are also included in the UTC together as key participants, but at the same time they declare a predominantly economic and transport and logistics agenda (as opposed to Turkey, which is forcing the military-political case).
So far, there are no significant contradictions between the geopolitical projects being implemented in the region. At the same time, the Chinese project (SCO plus One Belt, One Road) is the pivotal one. This is understandable, because only the Chinese project claims global status.
- What are the chances of creating a union of Central Asian countries?
- There was already a similar union - by the way, it was called: the Central Asian Union (2007) - as part of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Subsequently, it was abolished both due to the political ambitions of Islam Karimov and Nursultan Nazarbayev, and due to the lack of a clear sponsor of the association. At that time, the country did not advance further than the declaration of intent to create a free trade zone.
The second attempt at regional integration is also doomed to failure if the final beneficiary of the project is not identified, ready to invest in peripheral countries - Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Whether Astana and Tashkent are ready to bring the socio-economic sphere of less resource-provided neighbors up to their level is still an open question. Most likely not, since they themselves have serious problems with the standard of living of the population (especially in “non-capital” regions).
Less successful countries in the region can be "outbid" by non-regional players - Russia, China, Turkey and even Iran. In this case, there will be no talk of any expansion of the union between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Source: Ia-centr.ru
CentralsianLIGHT.org
January 30, 2023