Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Central Asian nations—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan—are facing a particularly challenging test of their governments, health care systems, and fledgling economies, which are heavily dependent on commodity exports to global economic engines such as China. Unlike many other developing countries left isolated by the pandemic, they have a choice of great-power backers, as China, Russia, and the United States compete to offer aid. After recently rolling out its Central Asia strategy, the United States’ resolve to play against other great powers in a new Great Game faces its first major test in COVID-19. Although the United States may never wield as much influence in Central Asia as immediate neighbors such as Russia and China, engaging the region is necessary if it seeks to avoid ceding power and influence to China, especially in the wake of COVID-19. And to engage, the United States must offer alternatives to China and Russia that help Central Asian governments defeat COVID-19, resist domination, maintain stability, and continue reforms.
As laid out in its strategy, the United States’ first policy objective is to help Central Asian states maintain sovereignty and resist domination by the other great powers. Great-power competition is, in part, a competition for strategic influence over precious resources. To compete with Russia and China globally, the United States must force them to commit more attention and resources in Central Asia, a region long under Russia’s political dominion yet increasingly economically dependent on China.
