Kazakhstan, Russia and China

The latest geopolitical hotspot is a Russian-leaning country located on the western border of China in Central Asia. Putin intends for it to remain under Russia’s influence. However, in a briefing in Beijing last Friday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took advantage of the unrest by announcing that “China and Kazakhstan are friendly neighbors and true strategic partners.” China called their 1,107 mile-long border a “bridge of friendship and a link of cooperation.” In recent years China has dramatically improved its economic and political connections in the region, purchased Petrokazakhstan, the former Soviet Union’s largest independent oil company, and built a pipeline that moves Kazakh oil to the Chinees border. By 2016, China had poured over $16 billion into the petroleum sector in Kazakhstan.

The relatively wealthy Central Asian nation of 19 million is situated squarely between China and Russia and has, until recently, escaped the attention of most Western media and political analysts. Its territory is comparable in size to Europe’s, making it the 9^th largest country in the world and the world’s largest landlocked nation. From a geopolitical perspective it is of growing importance to China’s global ambitions. President Xi Jinping is on a quest to increase China’s influence in Kazakhstan and across the Central Asian states to wean them from Russia’s sphere of influence. Competition and cooperation in the region between the two giant nuclear powers should be of concern to all peace-loving people.

Kazakhstan produces about 40% of the world’s uranium today. Since 2011 it is ranked as the world’s largest producer of raw uranium. It also has an abundance of natural gas, oil, and various other precious metals. What concerns military analysts most is the country’s vast uranium resources. Russian-financed companies currently pay for most mining operations in the country. The raw material is transported to Russia for refinement, then returned to Kazakhstan, and finally sold to China for use in its nuclear assemblies. Following Xi Jinping’s mid-December talks with Putin, the Chinese president stated that China’s intention is to “resume flexible and multifaceted cooperation with Russia and other CTSO [Collective Security Treaty Organization] countries in order to maintain security and stability in the region.” Xi is determined to be a major player.

Kazakhstan’s goal is to balance its relationship between the two nuclear giants. During the recent violent protects in Kazakhstan, its president called on Russia for help. Although President Vladimir Putin was able to quell last week’s protests by sending in over 3,000 paratroopers, he remains concerned about losing influence in the country to China. From the Chinese perspective, President Xi Jinping is acutely aware that Russia is signaling that it does not want increased Chinese involvement in the Central Asian state. China is not allowing Russia to block its efforts.

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Kazakhstan is emerging in 2022 as a new testing ground for violent anti-government protests at a time when China and Russia are preparing to coordinate a security network for Central Asian and Eurasian nations to stop NATO expansion. Moscow is concerned that the recent protests resembled the “color revolutions” and that they may destabilize other regional states currently within its sphere of influence. China, which experienced its own pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the more recent demonstrations in Hong Kong also is against similar revolutions. Although these are areas of cooperation, there also is a behind-the-scenes aspect of competition which puts Putin and Xi at odds with each other.

China prefers using soft power instruments in the region, which once served as part of the ancient Chinese Silk Route and today is part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Instability in Kazakhstan, including any anti-Chinese sentiment, could increase security concerns for Beijing. Second, China runs a huge bitcoin mining operation in Kazakhstan which some claim has threatened the country’s electric grid and led to blackouts. With the concurrent increase in the price of LNG, electricity-caused anger helped spark the recent protests.

Kazakhstan balances Russian geopolitical and economic influence by remaining close ties with China. Beijing remains concerned, too, that any ethic violence inside the country could spread across the Chinese border area into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and fuel rebel groups there. It was less than a year ago, on March 27, that hundreds of people staged anti-China demonstrations across Kazakhstan to denounce the incarceration of Turkic-speaking communities inside China. It looks like it will remain a hotspot for the foreseeable future as both Beijing and Moscow cooperate, compete, and vie for power and influence across the region.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Department during the Reagan Administration.

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.