Eurasian bridge or murky waters between east and west? Ideas, identity and output in Kazakhstan's foreign policy

Abstract

Kazakhstan's policies on both nation building and foreign policy have carried in-built contradictions. Both sets of policies have attempted to strengthen simultaneously an ethnic Kazakh national identity and a civic Kazakhstani state identity. They serve the dual challenge of consolidating the ethnic Kazakh nation and appeasing the large non-Kazakh, primarily Russian, minority. Nation building and foreign policy have proved symbiotic. President Nazarbaev has been able to trade strong relations with Russia for domestic ethnic Kazakh concessions. Generally, foreign policy content has been strongly pragmatic rather than ideological, dictated primarily by the government’s prioritizaton of securing new economic partners and multiple pipeline routes. Rhetoric and policies indicate a country that is floating between, rather than anchoring, East and West.