US Makes Last Minute Effort Bar China’s Influence in Central Asia

Pompoe’s recent trip to Central Asia was the office’s first since 2015. Cr: Cancillería del Perú

By: Luke Teague

Oklahoma City— From late January to early February of the new year, American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo engaged in a unique multinational diplomatic tour of Central Asia, spanning from Belarus to Kazakhstan. The purpose of this tour appears to have been to demonstrate American interest in the region and to convince regional leaders of the value of cooperation with the United States, namely in opposition to Russian and Chinese influence in the region. While Pompeo’s trip, the first by a Secretary of State to the region since 2015, signals greater US interest in these nations, the new strategy may be too little, too late.

The end of the trip saw the release of the United State’s new 2019-2025 Strategy for Central Asia, highlighting national objectives for the region for the upcoming decade. Pompeo repeatedly discussed the dangers of Chinese hegemony and the need for greater cooperation with the United States. However, the scale of American investment and engagement in the report are dwarfed by current Russian and Chinese interest and investment in the region.

 The Central Asian states are key pieces in China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, a trillion-dollar global infrastructure plan by the Chinese, making these nations targets of massive infrastructure and economic investment by Chinese companies and state-run banks. Chinese investment in these countries already totals $56 billion after just 7 years.

This only continues to increase as the Chinese economy becomes more tied to oil and gas and other natural resources extracted from Russia and transported through the region. In contrast, the US government has only directly invested $40 billion in the region over the last 25 years, and American trade in the area is only a fraction of Russian and Chinese private economic activity. 

 However, economic and political ties to China have come with increasing costs to many of the states participating in One Belt, One Road, and Central Asia is no exception to this trend. As China continues to expand its regional economic dominance, the Central Asian states have been forced to repress protests in their own countries against Chinese ethnic cleansing, at the risk of losing needed Chinese investment. 

 The lingua franca of the region remains Russian, and many leading political figures in these countries are holdovers from the Soviet-era administrations. Millions of Central Asians live and work in Russia, keeping cultural ties between the countries extremely strong.

In contrast, cultural exchange between Central Asia and the United States is of much more limited scope. Even Peace Corps missions are closed in all countries in the region except Kyrgyzstan. Likewise, less than $3 billion in trade occurs between the US and Central Asia annually, whereas trade between these nations and China and Russia totals almost $85 billion.

 While Secretary Pompeo and the Department of State may wish to reduce Chinese and Russian dominance in the region, the United States cannot project its influence into the backyard of the two great powers of Eurasia.

The economic dependence that these countries have on their larger neighbors, the shared cultural legacies, as well as integration into various regional supranational organizations outweigh the assistance that the new US strategy outlines, and continues to outstrip the ability of the US to influence the countries outside of the traditional international partnership structures.