The US strategy for Central Asia 2019–2025

Abstract

The shifting strategic landscape of Central Asia is being shaped primarily against the backdrop of the worst post-Cold War stand-off between Russia and the West. Moscow has sought to pushback Western attempts to isolate it by reasserting its influence in what has traditionally been the Kremlin’s sphere of influence or the ‘near abroad’. Apart from being the predominant security provider in the region, it also retains civilizational, cultural and ethnic linkages with the Central Asian Republics (CARs). In the meantime, the USA seems to be recalibrating its Eurasian strategy. It launched the C5+1 diplomatic platform in 2015. This has enabled the USA to establish a framework of high-level engagement with the Central Asian countries, thus providing a channel for Washington to advance a regional agenda which it lacked previously. The chapter seeks to explore the changing matrix of the US-CAR relations in the light of the new geostrategic environment in the region and to critically evaluate the new US strategy for Central Asia in 2019–2025. It is argued that the main US objective in Eurasia remains to promote greater economic cooperation among the Central Asian countries while ensuring that no single power, namely Russia or China, controls the region.