Regions in Transition in the Former Soviet Area by Alessandra Russo

Author:Alessandra Russo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

2 Main Features of Kyrgyz Foreign Policy

Since its dependence, the foreign policy of Kyrgyzstan has been affected by its small size, landlockedness and geographical position: its borders are important trans-shipment points on the way from Europe to Asia, whilst its territory is surrounded by countries that are not only larger but also contestant regional leaders. These structural constraints have consistently led the country to rely significantly on outside assistance—not only foreign investments and donors but also external political and security resources: that may explain why, immediately after gaining independence, Kyrgyzstan established a policy of alignment with the USA and the West, China, Japan, Turkey, yet maintaining at the same time an intense “special relationship” with Russia and its Central Asian neighbours. In a sense, the state and national identity of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan has been intrusively shaped by the international environment, to a much greater extent than other newly independent states (Huskey 2003).

Besides these “structural constraints”, the second important factor impacting the course of Kyrgyz foreign policy-making has been its political instability and the fragility of its state institutions. In fact, the country’s foreign policy-making is still in the process of being defined and institutionalised, and this process is conditioned by “complex organizational routines” (Sari 2012, p. 136) involving bureaucracies and traditional customary actors; on the other hand, the weak institutional design is counterbalanced by the “heavy” role played by the presidents and their entourages.

The relevance of external and internal factors has varied over time: “when the Central Asian region assumed more significance in global terms, the foreign policy behaviour of Kyrgyzstan has been linked primarily to external politics. […] When the region assumed a lesser significance in the international arena, the foreign policy behaviour of Kyrgyzstan has been linked primarily to domestic politics” (Sari 2012, p. 137). Accordingly, the course of Kyrgyz foreign policy since independence can be periodised according to “presidential cycles” but also using the dawn of the 2000s as a threshold, given that this marks the period in which Kyrgyzstan was first identified with a transit route from the North to South in the context of the Afghan war and reconstruction.

Throughout the 1990s, Kyrgyzstan was held up as a successful case of post-Soviet transition and presented both by its national establishment and numerous foreign observers as an island of democracy surrounded by authoritarian regimes: the former President Askar Akayev ’s rhetoric was actually based on casting his country as the “Switzerland of Central Asia ”. Generally speaking, Akayev has been identified with the pursuit of a “multivector” foreign policy: the development of diplomatic relations with Western countries and creation of linkages with Western institutions were counterbalanced by the maintenance of intense ties with Russia and the establishment of positive connections with China. Since the second half of the 1990s in particular Kyrgyz foreign policy has displayed a developing “Asian vector” along with a preference for multilateral frameworks, which led to the formation of four concentric circles: the inner one included the other Central Asian countries, the second

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