Preparation for the EU-Central Asia summit and problems of the Russian concept of multipolarity
Seduction by Europe
On April 8–10, Brussels, Astana and Tashkent confirmed that “at the end of April” Uzbekistan (as planned back in January) will host participants in the next EU-Central Asia summit.
This event is positioned as the main one in relation to previous meetings between the EU and Central Asia and is even referred to as the “first formal summit”, i.e. with the full participation of leaders. In fact, three such full-fledged meetings have taken place over the past ten months.
Last June, a summit was held in Kyrgyzstan*, where top EU administrators tried to find a response to the large-scale Chinese initiative in Xi'an. They did this carefully, did not throw around sanctions, and surprisingly did not get carried away with anti-Russian rhetoric.
In September, Germany** became the host site; here the sanctions agenda sounded much louder and more clearly. More specific were the proposals from the EU, where they remembered that back in 2019 investment initiatives were announced, documents and road maps were signed. On this basis, proposals began to be rebuilt.
China’s response, in theory, was supposed to be a grand forum “One Belt, One Road,” but observers did not escape the fact that the heads of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan did not come to China.
The head of Belarus did not go there either, but literally a week later he made a separate visit with a large program, where, unlike, by the way, from Russia, he signed and normatively consolidated relations with China based on the concept of a “Community of Shared Destiny” “How are the visit of the head of Belarus to China and our ideas of Greater Eurasia connected”).
At the end of this January in Brussels, Central Asia participated in a ministerial format, but all this took place within the framework of a forum*** dedicated to the monstrous (albeit quite old) Global Gateway project, which the EU decided to revive and fill with money. The proposals have already become such that the high-ranking Russophobe J. Borrell no longer hesitated in wording:
“Brussels needs Central Asian countries in order to make anti-Russian sanctions effective.”
The path from June last year with his message “sanctions are an important matter, but in this case not the main thing” to the speeches of Russia’s great “friend” J. Borrell this January was covered in eight months. This is a very brisk pace for the European bureaucracy.
And here we can clearly trace the very mechanisms of “seduction by Europe.” Where did you start, what projects did you go through in your mind, and which ones did you end up with? And also not only project work, but also interaction with elites, as well as a peculiar distribution of roles in this game.
General interaction was supervised by Berlin, fine financial issues - London, Paris focused on the Caucasus, on ousting Russia from Armenia.
Even the Vatican does not ignore the region, which is trying to play the role of a kind of connecting bridge between the EU and China through Central Asia, smoothing out the sharp edges of competition between the two macrosystems. And the fact that competition began can be seen with the naked eye just in May last year.
"Group of Five"
The most interesting thing is that the countries of Central Asia, despite all the disagreements and discrepancies, have been trying to act as the “Group of Five” in the international arena since mid-2022. Almost all major events take place in the “Five Plus” format. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan carried out quite large reforms and signed a de facto union agreement.
The task of creating such a foreign policy core and carrying out reforms is, in general, clear: to bargain more for oneself in the competition between Beijing and Europe, to put an unspoken framework on the influence of Russia and Turkey, and also to demonstrate to investors a favorable climate, the ability of the region to resolve contradictions on its own and ensure stability.
In Russia, this is usually called “multi-vector policy,” and in recent years the connotation of this term has become negative. Here, of course, one can discuss the topic of why multipolarity is welcomed in Russia, but multivectorism is condemned, but in general it should hardly be surprising that countries with economies like our Central Asian neighbors play on many boards at once. Investors are sought in the Middle East, money is kept in London, they earn money from labor resources in Russia, infrastructure projects are expected from China, etc.
You can see how the structure of investment and trade in the region will be built in 2024. Trade with China - $52 billion (27%), EU - $48 billion (25%), Russia - $41 billion (21%), Turkey and the Middle East - $15 billion (7%), among themselves - a modest 10 billion dollars (5%). Accumulated investments in the region: European Union - $105 billion, China - $65 billion, Russia - $40 billion.
That is, we see that neither work with Russia over the past years, either within the EAEU or outside this association, nor interaction with each other has turned the region into an integral economic unit - into a subject. Russia does not have preferential trade turnover and investment projects, the region is weakly connected within itself, and indicators between the EU and China are divided almost equally.
However, in terms of efficiency, Beijing is still ahead of Europe, since it has received greater trade turnover with smaller investment injections. It is also clear that the modern “Group of Five” is precisely the foreign policy project of the countries of Central Asia, the features of which were precisely discussed a few paragraphs above.
Last September, Washington held the USA-Central Asia summit, at the end of which it became clear that the Americans were not going to play systematically and seriously in this area.
At first, they tried to split up the Group of Five in the Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan link, then they used vague slogans. But London and Berlin picked up the American baton quite effectively. Washington, for many reasons that have been voiced through numerous official sources, is targeting the Middle East and India.
However, there is a strong belief in Russia that the United States is leaving everywhere to fight China, and for some reason specifically in Southeast Asia. Economic statistics and investments do not indicate such trends, so it is more a matter of predictive popular trends. Time will pass, they will change. Now the main headache for the United States is the Gaza Strip, because of which the official US program in the region has paused.
Preparatory steps
In recent months, Brussels has had a good feel for the points where it can stop Chinese initiatives to integrate Central Asia into its concept of a “Community of Shared Destiny”, and not only revived a lot of investment projects, but also put them into a certain system.
It is worth noting that almost the entire establishment of our neighbors visited British financiers over the fall-winter, and well-known financial clans under the common brand of “Rothschilds” became very involved in Kyrgyzstan and became more active in Kazakhstan.
It should be noted that over the past six months, the EU has resolved most of the complex issues with Turkey, which immediately affected Ankara’s investment opportunities. Despite the seemingly unfavorable situation with inflation at first glance, investment funds went to Turkey. There can hardly be any doubt that interaction between Turkmenistan and Turkey with gas projects and the activation of the EU in Turkmenistan have many direct and indirect points of connection.
Only after taking all these preparatory steps did the frontmen from European politics begin to broadcast to the public about sanctions, and it must be said that Moscow actually began to receive calls from the region regarding sanctions regularly. The matter, of course, is not only about European politics, the accumulation effect of sanctions packages as a whole is also at work here, but the trend is still quite visible.
In this regard, if we put all the available puzzles into an overall picture, then at the April event we are almost guaranteed to see a large infrastructure investment package from the EU in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, full support for connecting the efforts of Turkmenistan and Turkey in terms of the “gas corridor”, proposals to Tajikistan “ think about the prospects,” and all this under the thick sauce of “green energy.” All this splendor will be crowned with the cherry of demands for sanctions, which will already be voiced harshly and directly.
Some of these demands will result in further tightening of work in the banking sector and control of re-exports, which, of course, will naturally cause a wave of indignation in us. But here the question is not even a wave of anger in the “how long” style, but rather the general pattern in the region, where, after a strong performance in the first half of last year, China has not yet gained significant points in recent months.
The Chinese value cluster, which is not even disputed in the concept of such structures as the IMF, according to all trends and declarations, is collected from Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Russia. If Europe is pushing through projects in Central Asia with its investments, then the Chinese future model turns out to be logistically and politically weak almost in the very center.
This is such a big wedge in the Chinese initiative. By and large, Beijing itself is to blame here, since, having declared an investment boom in the region in May last year, it, according to a glorious tradition, began to withhold money for Central Asia. The Europeans played on these weaknesses of Beijing quite effectively, and China will have to respond with something.
Neither European officials, nor British financiers, nor European raw material producers will give away Central Asia with its periodic table and the $105 billion already invested in the region to Beijing without competition. The Europeans, of course, will not take over Central Asia, but they will definitely try to force China to give up half of the region’s resources. If all this competition further limits Moscow’s capabilities and influence, the result will be quite acceptable for all Western institutions.
In Russia, of course, there is a popular thesis that Europe is governed by not entirely sane people and institutions. The Russophobes gathered there were excellent, but everything stated here somehow does not allow us to talk about special insanity or stupidity.
"Eurasian Pole"
In this regard, of course, questions arise about the model that we ourselves are building today in the region. It is very ambiguous, and it is precisely this ambiguity that the elites of Central Asia are and will naturally play on. Again, any elites who find themselves in a similar position would do this.
The ambiguity for the region is that everyone understands the unreality of the formation of the “Eurasian Pole” as a macroeconomic value cluster. But at the same time, for quite pragmatic reasons, the countries of Central Asia cannot and do not want to refuse to work with Moscow, as many European bureaucrats would like. And this forces them to support theses about “multipolarity” and participate in some projects.
Where do the elites of Kyrgyzstan go to discuss finances? In London. But at the same time, a common air defense zone is created, etc. A common “pole”, under which there is no common value zone, on the one hand, obliges us to develop and deepen the format of the EAEU, and the countries of Central Asia are quite effectively playing a game from an old Russian fairy tale. about “tops and roots.”
We pretend that we have a common value space with a common labor market, migrants are sent to us, migrants bring added value home, and so on in a circle. There are practically no common production facilities, there is no total added value at the “pole”, but the pole seems to exist.
It was quite interesting to observe how Russia at the “One Belt, One Road” forum last year smoothly moved away from the issue of joining the concept of the “Community of Shared Destiny”. And you can understand this with your mind - the concept is de facto a Chinese value cluster and the Chinese “Eastern Pole”.
This is not multipolarity at all, and Moscow, of course, is not eager to go there. But not going also doesn’t work out very well. And it’s not to say that Russia didn’t invest in the region at all: 41 billion dollars of direct accumulated investments is almost a Chinese result, trade turnover relative to the West and East is weak, and there is little overall production.
It is believed that the third party, watching how the other two compete with each other, ultimately gains an advantage. Judging by our media, we have something similar floating around in the form of ideas and even concepts, but such constructions are good in the office, but “in the field” everyone will evaluate two parameters - the ability of our own economy to produce goods for export and to generate added value , part of which can be used to invest and develop new markets.
The Western and Eastern blocs have such opportunities; whether we have the potential for full-fledged multipolarity is a matter, to put it mildly, for discussion.
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* “The European Union and Central Asia – the paradoxes of the June summit”
** “Summit “Central Asia – Germany”. US pushes EU to invest in G5 countries
*** “Central Asia – EU Summit”. Sanctions and activation of old projects"
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