Central Asia’s Multilateralism in Surge
July 2024
Murad Nasibov
Research Fellow at Justus Liebig University Giessen
Source Photo: Astanatimes.com
The Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) programme of the Asian Development Bank, which was launched in 2001 and includes Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Mongolia, and Pakistan in addition to five Central Asian states, adds to the record of multilateralism of the last decade at the ministerial level (Tashkent, 2019; Ashgabat, 2018; Dushanbe, 2017). Last November saw a new summit introduced in Baku – the Summit of the participating states of the UN Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA), which brought together the heads of state of Central Asian nations, except for Turkmenistan (represented at a lower level) and Azerbaijan.
Of course, the Central Asian Summits (re)launched in 2018 have been the core platform where Central Asian states could meet exclusively for Central Asian matters and coordinate their participation in different multilateral platforms. The 2022 Central Asian Summit held in Bishkek saw Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan signing the Treaty on Friendship, Good-Neighborliness and Cooperation for the Development of Central Asia in the XXI Century, with Turkmenistan and Tajikistan suggesting they would join later after completing internal procedures. No less often, Central Asian states have also come together in trilateral formats to address issues directly concerning only part of the Central Asian states, as in the August 2023 meeting of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to address the potential consequences of the Qosh Tepe canal currently being constructed in Afghanistan.
”Central Asia has managed to set itself at the heart of an ever-growing, dense network of regional multilateral formats in the wider region of Eurasia.”
Hence, the surge of bilateralism needs to be seen as at least partly a function of growing multilateralism in the region, while bilateralism does drive multilateralism, too, as in the example of the Gulf-Central Asia Summit, which resulted from the increased bilateral engagement of the Gulf states with Central Asia.
Not only has multilateralism been reviving in Central Asia, but the Central Asian Five have also entered into two inter-regional cooperation formats: the EU-Central Asia Summit and the Gulf Cooperation Council-Central Asian Summit, with Central Asia-ASEAN set to become the third such inter-regionalism case involving Central Asia. Even though both current inter-regional frameworks were initiated by the other side—the EU in the former and Saudi Arabia in the latter—they demonstrate how close regional cooperation in Central Asia can have wider effects beyond the region.
Although Azerbaijan’s joining the Central Asian Summit in 2023 might sit uncomfortably as an example of inter-regionalism, it similarly shows the outreaching effect of Central Asian multilateralism. When Russian and Chinese foreign ministers announced in their press conference in Beijing on April 8 that they wanted to synchronize the agendas of the SCO and the BRICS and enrich the institutional affiliation the latter offers beyond the full membership status, they counted on Central Asia, unquestionably, among others.