Trump’s Summit With Central Asian Leaders Can Rebalance World Power

The November 6 summit of Central Asian leaders in the Trump White House spells a potential sea-change in the world’s power balance. This column has followed the rise of the ‘Stans exhaustively in recent years, arguing (most recently in the Japan Times) that supporting the region is the shortest way to counter the West’s rivals geo-strategically. Hitherto, China and Russia have dominated the economy and security of the Stans, in effect keeping the Silk Road and its riches bottled up for their own uses. Moscow, in particular, has done so the longest, ever since it conquered the region circa 1800.

Take another look at the geography. You will see that the region’s outlets to the world start at the Chinese border and go Westward ultimately through the Caucasus and Iran, through areas aligned with Moscow. The old Silk Road. What has become Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. But a lot has changed at accelerating speed, especially since the end of the Afghan conflict and the advent of the Ukraine war. The ‘Stans put on a burst of cross-border trade agreements and conflict resolutions. The Biden administration launched the so-called C5+1 diplomatic initiative with the five Stans and now the Trump administration has followed up substantively (this despite the government shut down and the America First rhetoric of the past). The region is on a path to becoming the equivalent to the Gulf in prosperity and clout.

Why does that matter? Because a powerful economic and security presence in the hitherto blind spot of Russia, China and Iran, will distract those countries from pushing outward to Ukraine, Europe, the Middle East, Taiwan and Japan. The ‘Stans throw-weight, especially the pan-Turkic continuum, will act as a magnet to ethnic cousins spread all over Russia, Iran and China (Xinjiang and the Uyghurs). That Turkic continuum of the old Silk Road has come back to life as a result of very recent historic developments.

For the Silk Road to reach its blocked outlet to the world, to break the Russia-China monopoly on its resources, it had to reopen the route southward to Turkey and the sea. This was unthinkable until Azerbaijan took back from Armenia the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, which overlooks the southward route. Moscow had hitherto guaranteed Armenia’s security and its hold on the enclave. The Ukraine distraction prevented Putin from upholding the guarantee. Armenians felt betrayed. Turkey (along with Israel) had helped the Azeris, their ethnic cousins, and began to push for a reopening of the Southward route to Turkey which got dubbed the Zangezur Corridor. Enter the Trump White House. The President presided over a peace agreement between the historic enemies Azerbaijan and Armenia in August this year and promised massive US investment in security and infrastructure, rail, oil pipelines and the like. It is now called the Trump corridor.

In effect, he took away the protection role from the Russians, and made America the guarantor of the Stans’ rise in prosperity as their resources can now flow out to the world freely at global prices. That involves Kazakhstan’s oil, Turkmenistan’s natural gas, Uzbek minerals and the like. Trump solidified the process with the recent Central Asia summit by presiding over multiple contracts involving US companies. Kazakstan even signed on to the Abraham Accords, thereby creating a critical mass of oil producers setting global crude prices outside the influence of Russia and Iran. The Zangezur summit followed by the Central Asia summit decisively shapes a route of trade that bypasses a critical cluster of the West’s enemies.

Beside the economic effects, how does this benefit American geostrategic interests? Let’s start with China. That entire pathway of trade westward from China through Central Asia was set to be dominated, owned through debt, by Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. The route’s outlet to the world at the other end was planned to go through Iran, China’s ally. That geo-strategic option has now faded. Nor can the mullahs play a spoiler role through their geographic proximity. Iran made threatening noises when Trump got the Zangezur deal signed but Israel’s demolition of Tehran’s military power has effectively neutralized that threat. Beijing will remain a trading partner for the Stans, along with Russia, but not exclusively, and not as part of a strategic alternative bloc to the west.

Meantime, Turkey has already entered the fray as security guarantor displacing Russia in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, providing weapons and training to their Turkic cousins. (Tajikistan is the outlier here as culturally and ethnically Persian.) This, along with the pan-Turkist initiatives under way in education, history and language, should add cultural glue to the structural underpinnings of a Stans power bloc. Its rise economically and militarily will act as a distraction to Moscow and Beijing in their respective focus on Ukraine/Europe and Taiwan/Japan. Therein lies, perhaps, the biggest geo-strategic benefit to the west in helping the Stans. Resources spent on guarding against the rise of China/Russia’s hitherto docile blind-spot neighbors are resources that cannot be used outward towards democracies.

There are potential negatives. Almost none of the countries involved is a model of Western-style democracy, free speech, and human rights. But then neither are the Gulf states. Attaining political standards is a process, as we have seen with Singapore, Taiwan and the like. One that follows on achieving a degree of prosperity and stability. And the Stans, after all, are surrounded by hegemons committed to internal destabilization – including Iran and Afghanistan pumping out Islamic radicalism. Human rights groups should certainly keep monitoring the scene but in general patience remains, unavoidably, the best option. Then there’s the question mark over Mr.Trump’s long term focus or commitment to the initiatives. Only time will tell.

Perhaps the most vulnerable aspect of the strategic shift concerns Turkey and Erdogan. Unquestionably, Turkey comes out the biggest winner in the new scenario, positioned geographically as the main outlet to the world for all that new trade . The emotional charge of Turks reconnecting with cousins lost for centuries will boost Erdogan’s sinking and inflation-dogged popularity. The problem comes with his habit of provocative intrusions into Middle Eastern affairs. In Syria and Palestine, he locks horns constantly with Israel. He persistently challenges the Saudis as leader of Islam. Those two being America’s chief allies in the region, central to the Abraham accords, he is creating powerful enemies. His failures could harm the