US Policy Toward Central Asia

Abstract

The period between the Soviet disintegration in 1990’s and 2005 has a well marked character of its own. In these years US foreign policy rapidly moved towards closer engagements with the five Central Asian states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan with the ostensible object of promoting its influence beyond Europe and in the region that is contagious to China, the Middle East, and Russia. The US foreign policy in this region moved along many separate but convergent paths. Firstly, the US succeeded in entering for the first time into normal diplomatic relations with the states that were previously part of that Soviet Union. Secondly, the US started military, political and economic engagements that strengthened its relations and influence with the region. Third, it attempted to make up for the regions apparent weaknesses by supplementing the engagement with mutual and coordinated liaison with Russia the former colonial power of the region in which the US successfully moved the states towards nuclear proliferation. In the next phase it entered the region with military bases, investment ventures, projects at the private grass root level, projects in economic transition, relations with NGO’s, regional alliance and so on. This study puts forward security, political and economic linkages of the US policy toward CAR states – in the light of theoretical framework of the power play of realists, and the tools of foreign policy intending influence in a region.