What counts as Central Asia? For some, the term refers exclusively to the five “-stans” that came under Soviet rule in the 20th century – namely, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Others would also include Azerbaijan and Armenia, two states connecting these five with West Asia and the Caucasus region. Still, some would consider Mongolia, Russian Siberia, and Afghanistan as constituent parts of the region, given long-standing historical, cultural, and diasporic ties between these lands.
As with most geographical labels, there is no metaphysical truth undergirding what counts – and what does not – as a Central Asian state.
Despite the lack of clarity concerning its boundaries, Central Asia has long been featured in sweeping meta-narratives and geopolitical tussles. From the Great Game between the British and Russian Empires in the 19th century to Halford Mackinder’s fascination with the proverbial “Heartland” to the World-Island; from the Cyrillization of the region’s written scripts under Soviet rule to the forging of their post-independence identities by these countries, there has been no shortage of discussion concerning the relevance of Central Asia for external powers.
Present discourses tend to cast the region – especially the five “-stans” – as sandwiched between great powers. Yet this is a deeply flawed oversimplification.
The strategic importance and decisional autonomy of powers within Central Asia have both been grossly underestimated. With the disruptions posed to maritime trade by the Iran-U.S. war, an increasing sense of urgency in the renewable transition, and shifting power dynamics between China, Russia, and India, Central Asia is no longer merely a buffer zone between larger powers.
Instead, it is rapidly becoming a region with its own voice in relation to regional (albeit not necessarily international) affairs. The critical question is not whether Central Asia can be “won over” by Moscow, Beijing, Brussels, or Washington (it will not), but whether it can articulate a collective agenda that turns its natural geography from a constraint into substantive leverage.
Since the unravelling of Soviet rule in the region in the early 1990s, the past 35 years have seen the emergence in Central Asia of three structural trends, which have not only accorded to its member states much greater strategic importance, but also the capability to bargain, negotiate, and pursue meaningfully constructive developmental policies vis-à-vis other, larger powers.
A Supply Chain Nexus
It was at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, on September 7, 2013, that Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the establishment of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” initiative, a significant aspect of what eventually morphed into the “Belt and Road Initiative.” Since 2013, China has invested tens of billions of dollars into Kazakhstan’s energy, transport, and agriculture, with a particular emphasis upon transit networks. Indeed, with the explicit weaponization of chokepoints for maritime-shipped oil, Beijing policymakers will likely feel a heightened pressure to bolster overland Eurasian connectivity.
Yet while China-Central Asia connectivity has often been portrayed as the definitive linchpin of the region’s role as a supply chain nexus, this is but a part of a much bigger picture. In fact, the region geographically conjoins energy-rich West Asia and the Arabian Gulf, the densely populated and emerging markets of the Indian subcontinent, the manufacturing powerhouse of China, and the sparsely populated yet geostrategically ambitious power of Russia. The first and last of these regions are presently enmeshed in kinetic conflicts that have divided regional alliances and hugely impeded maritime flow of trade in West Asia and the Gulf (with the recent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz), and rendered Russia financially and logistically estranged from vast swathes of developed economies (e.g. the G-7).
In this light, then, Central Asia’s strategic potential does not stem from China’s largesse; it is rooted instead in the narrowing of viable logistical options for its neighbors.
For this reason, Moscow has pledged major financial backing for the modernization of rail and port infrastructure along the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which comprises routes straddling Russia, the Caspian Sea, Iran, and India, while leveraging maritime hubs including the Turkmenbashi seaport in Turkmenistan. Both New Delhi and Islamabad have sought to court the region in the past two decades, with both joining in the 2010s the pivotal Ashgabat Agreement, which also includes Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Oman, Pakistan, and India.
Central Asian capitals increasingly find themselves enjoying the luxury of not having to choose between Russia, China, India, and Turkiye, instead engaging with all suitors in accordance with their own needs – in a manner comparable to choosing food items from a buffet. Despite the structural incomparability between the Strait of Hormuz and the region, the blockade has highlighted the portentous influence wielded by the countries through which key logistical corridors (such as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, or Middle Corridor) primarily run through – namely, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
A Repository for Energy and Critical Raw Materials
The 1990s saw a dramatic surge in interest in hydrocarbon development in independent Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, spearheaded by many of the same industry giants that had played a similar role in the Middle East decades prior. With the sizeable Tengiz, Kashagan, and Karachanganak fields, Kazakhstan ranks among the top 15 countries in the world by oil reserves, while Turkmenistan has the world’s fourth largest natural gas reserves. Yet with the world diversifying away from fossil fuels, it is in the nuclear energy space that the potential of Central Asia is most conspicuous.
Kazakhstan has been the world’s top producer of uranium since 2009, accounting for 40 percent of global output in 2025. Benefiting from joint ventures with China, France, Russia (three nuclear powers), and Canada, as well as relative sparsity of population, the country has taken renewed interest in the development of nuclear energy. The Kazakh public voted to introduce nuclear energy in October 2024, whilst Uzbekistan announced the construction of its own nuclear power plant in May 2024. These winds of change speak to the cognizance that the push for nuclear energy is aligned with both the region’s energy security and economic growth aspirations. With the ongoing disruptions to oil and energy supply – with its apparent ramifications throughout ASEAN and East Asia – the drive toward nuclear energy would only speed up among Asian powers. Access to these resources would indubitably be increasingly carefully rationed by regional governments, as a source and point of tactical leverage.
In 2025, the third-largest rare earths reserve in the world was reportedly discovered in Kazakhstan, offering important and a potentially viable alternative to both China and Brazil. Yet to borrow the words of Ernest Scheyder, the “war below” is mirrored by the “war above” – the fight for rare earths is real, but reserves are only one part of the equation. Indeed, most rare earths are not all that rare, rather the technologies and capacity to mine, process, and utilize them are asymmetrically concentrated.
On this front, Central Asian states potentially have much maneuvering room. While much of the rare earths processing ecosystem is dominated by China (and in particular Baotou, a city in Inner Mongolia), should the Kazakh government play its cards right in pressing Beijing for substantive technological sharing and deeper partnerships, it could go a long way in cementing a key role within global supply chains.
Of course, it behooves sound management on the part of their political elite for Central Asian states to accordingly escape the resource curse, which could arise should an overreliance upon natural resources that inevitably creates room for corruption and the emergence of vested interests.
An Emerging Manufacturing Base?
The world is aging rapidly. Perhaps AI and robots could come to the rescue of economic productivity, but not of the numbers of humans alive on the planet at any given moment. Given this context, Central Asia boasts a fertility rate of 3.1 births per woman. Indeed, its population had roughly increased by half between 1990 and 2019, even despite the mass emigration of Russian-speaking populations and economic turmoil in the early 1990s; its median age is approximately 26.8 years.
Population growth is of course not always an a priori good. Yet with a literacy rate of approximately 99.5 percent and an average 11 to 12.5 years of education – above the global par – the region is well-poised to provide the manpower and talents required for a knowledge-driven era. Evidently, more reforms are needed in ensuring the quality and accessibility of such education, yet prominent East Asian economies with aging populations that lie to the region’s east – South Korea, Japan, and Singapore – can most definitely look toward Central Asia as a source of skilled labor.
Such labor dividends are paying off when it comes to the fledgling manufacturing sector in the region. While a decade ago, 68 percent of Chinese investments in Central Asia were directed toward raw materials, today, that share has declined to 54 percent. Manufacturing now accounts for 22 percent of total Chinese FDI in the region ($14.5 billion), and energy accounts for 12 percent. In drawing the right lessons from the perceptual whiplash over some of its earlier investments, China has shifted its economic strategy in Central Asia from unstructured and uncoordinated lending, toward industrial localization-centric FDI and more restrained sovereign borrowing. In the decade between 2015 and 2025, Beijing’s FDI stock in Central Asia almost doubled – auguring more sustained growth in the region’s industrial and manufacturing capabilities.
Toward A Multi-Alignment Future?
Questions can of course be raised over governance quality and political accountability in the region. Some commentators have noted troubling undercurrents manifesting in the form of democratic rollback. It would be imprudent to dismiss questions over succession, transparency, and the cost of political stabilization at the expense of participatory pluralism. Enacting sustainable reforms, as one of the authors has come to experience, can be deeply challenging.
Yet Central Asia will only become precipitously multi-aligned. This does not entail equidistance for the sake of not taking sides; nor does it entail the naïve belief that all great and regional powers are the same. What it does mean, however, is deepening economic ties with Europe while harnessing Chinese infrastructural investment, engaging with Turkish overtures while welcoming American and Japanese technology – and, at the same time, keeping Russia on board.
A more confident Central Asia must also deepen intra-regional cooperation in relation to resource development, technological modernization, and digital-physical hybrid forms of infrastructural connectivity. Domestically, capitals must look toward instilling a more technocratic and meritocratic political culture, encouraging and creating room for organic and constructive critiques of policies.
The integration of the region remains a heavy work in progress. Indeed, as attested to by the example of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), cross-national integration and alignment can prove to be politically costly and difficult. Yet contra ASEAN, there is a much higher degree of similarity across Central Asian states than Southeast Asia.
Such similarity does not necessarily produce convergence on all critical questions – indeed, the relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan (the latter of which officially joined the C5 consultative format in late 2025) remains fraught, despite significant improvement from the nadir a few years ago. There may also come a point where the forms of economic pressure and tacit coercion applied on other regions – for them to “pick a side” and “take a stance” – could come to afflict the Central Asian states.
Yet in the face of such adversity and challenges, the region’s message should be clear. Central Asia is not merely a corridor to somewhere else. Nor is it a prize in someone else’s contest. It is a geopolitical space – with disparate yet largely collaborative actors – in its own right. It is high time, then, that its members spoke accordingly. To paraphrase the words of Gayatri Spivak, Central Asia can indeed speak.
