‘4 Winds’ Blow Kazakhstan to Foreign-Policy Middle Ground

With a landmass nearly seven times the size of California, the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan would seem unfairly labeled a small country.

But sandwiched as it is between the eastern giants of Russia and China, courted by Islamic powers and coveted for its natural wealth by big oil money in the West, Kazakhstan’s strategy in defining relations with its powerful friends and neighbors has been to maintain a humble profile.

And as President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev travels across the United States next week in search of stronger backing from Washington and deeper investment by U.S. business, he will be presenting his newly independent homeland as a quiet haven in the heart of a region reeling with instability, conflict and political change.

It’s not that Kazakhstan has emerged unscathed from the chaotic collapse of communism and the Soviet Union six years ago, but this country of 17 million has undramatically settled in to a new era of benevolent autocracy that has created a stable atmosphere conducive to good regional ties and attractive for foreign investment.

“Kazakhstan is no world superpower and it never will be, so it has to keep its relations in order and in balance with its neighbors,” says Lev Tarakov, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Almaty. He describes “four winds” moving his country’s foreign policy to a middle ground of moderation--Russia, China, the Islamic world and the West.

Russia has long been the most important regional ally of Kazakhstan, where nearly one-third of the population is Russian.

“But we would be foolish to ignore the potential for expanding economic ties with China, Japan, Western Europe and the United States,” observes Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Alesin, pointing to considerably higher investments being made here by countries other than cash-strapped Russia.

During a recent visit by Chinese Premier Li Peng, Nazarbayev concluded a $9.5-billion pipeline deal with Beijing that will connect two major Kazakh oil fields with China’s western Xinjiang region. The move was aimed at reducing Kazakhstan’s reliance on Russian pipelines to ship its abundant oil and gas resources and was read in Moscow as an unnerving display of this country’s growing independence.

Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin visited just days later and was presented with a laundry list of Kazakhstan’s small grievances amid otherwise good relations, including Moscow’s inadequate compensation for the Russian Space Agency’s continued use of the Soviet-era cosmodrome and launch facilities in Baikonur.

“Moscow still views Kazakhstan as its satellite, and our economy is indeed very dependent on Russia,” says economics professor Roustem K. Zhoulamanov, deputy director of the Institute for Development of Kazakhstan. “Militarily and strategically, Russia is not worried about our relations with China, but Kazakhstan’s reorientation of its economy toward China and the West is another matter.”

The biggest foreign investor to date is U.S.-based Chevron Corp., and 84 other U.S. companies are also registered to do business in Kazakhstan, the U.S. Embassy reports. That has raised the U.S. profile high above that of Russia’s fledgling private businesses and encouraged the Kazakh leadership to streamline investment laws and taxation, reforms that are expected to generate even more active U.S. involvement in this country’s post-Soviet development.

Opposition political figures largely have been marginalized in Nazarbayev’s strongman state, but those still active urge President Clinton and other Washington leaders to pressure the Kazakh president during his U.S. visit to show more commitment to democracy and reform.

Criticism of Nazarbayev’s autocratic tendencies, such as his canceling of elections in 1995, is likely to come up during his talks in Washington, Houston and San Francisco, said one U.S. diplomat here. But the envoy said U.S. officials will continue to push for democratic improvements using the model they apply to China--active economic engagement in the expectation that better living standards lead to more individual prosperity and freedom.

Williams was recently on assignment in Almaty.