The skyline of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, is a physical reflection of the Central Asian nation’s approach to foreign affairs.
A sign reading “Moscow” sits atop a Kazakh-Russian business center. Beside it is a pagoda-crowned luxury hotel owned by the Chinese state oil company. Nearby is a gleaming hotel tower and shopping mall, emblazoned with the American brand Ritz-Carlton.
And they all exist in the shadow of Abu Dhabi Plaza, the city’s biggest skyscraper, developed by a real estate firm from the United Arab Emirates.
It is the product of what Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, calls a “multivector” foreign policy.
In pursuit of greater independence and security, Mr. Tokayev’s landlocked nation of 21 million people, bordered by Russia and China, has tried to counterbalance the neighboring superpowers by inviting investment from countries farther afield. They include the United States; European nations like the Netherlands and Switzerland; South Korea; Turkey; and several in the Middle East.
A desire to emulate the Gulf states is palpable at the headquarters of Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund, Samruk Kazyna, which is named for a magical bird from Kazakh folklore that lays a golden egg atop the Tree of Life. Kazakhstan’s tightly controlled political system, its multinational quest for investment and its natural-resource-fueled development offer parallels to nations like the U.A.E. and Qatar.
“We are driven by a pragmatic approach,” Nurlan Zhakupov, the head of the fund, said in an interview atop a skyscraper overlooking a newly built part of Astana. “If we see merit in working with the U.S., the E.U., a Chinese, Russian, Korean, German, Emirati or whatever company, we assess it on a relative performance basis and we choose what is the best for us.”
Lately, there has been a particular focus on the United States.
Kazakhstan is a junior partner to Russia in a NATO-like military alliance and a European Union-like trade bloc. But that hasn’t stopped its leaders from aggressively courting Washington under President Trump, prompting a slew of business deals, a series of high-level meetings and a frenzy of engagement with American companies.
In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Central Asian governments have drawn closer together as a bloc, while welcoming Mr. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy. They are seeking opportunities to reduce their reliance on Moscow, even as they tread lightly so as not to cross the Kremlin or antagonize China.
“For the business relationship, it has never been better,” said Jeff Erlich, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kazakhstan, who has worked in and around the region since the late 1990s. “In my experience, that is clear.”
In Washington, Mr. Trump has dispensed with America’s traditional talk of human rights and democracy in connection with foreign policy. He has instead embraced a mercantilist approach, judging countries like Kazakhstan by what deals they can offer. A top priority has been securing access to Kazakhstan’s large supply of critical minerals and ensuring that they can be exported via the Middle Corridor, a route that crosses the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus to avoid Russia.
Mr. Tokayev’s authoritarian ways — he recently changed Kazakhstan’s Constitution to strengthen his power — once hindered his country’s relationship with the United States. But under the second Trump administration, which dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development programs working on human rights issues in Kazakhstan, such concerns are no longer an irritant for Washington.
The Kazakh leader has joined Mr. Trump’s Board of Peace. He signed up to the Abraham Accords even though Kazakhstan already had diplomatic relations with Israel. And he led a high-level delegation of Central Asian leaders to Washington last year, during which the Kazakh state mining firm signed a tungsten deal with a U.S. company that was later revealed to be backed by Mr. Trump’s sons.
It was just one of 29 pacts that Kazakhstan signed with U.S. companies, worth over $17 billion. They included a deal with Amazon’s Leo satellite internet service and an agreement with Nvidia, the U.S. chipmaker, and Firebird, an American cloud computing company, to build an A.I. data hub. Kazakhstan also agreed to a $4.2 billion deal to buy 300 rail cars from the American firm Wabtec.
During the trip to Washington, Mr. Tokayev proclaimed that Mr. Trump had been “sent by heaven.”
Leaning too aggressively into the relationship with Mr. Trump could carry risks for Kazakhstan if the political winds change in Washington. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, while campaigning for re-election, has said that if Democrats take power in Congress, people will be questioned under oath about the involvement of Mr. Trump’s sons in the Kazakh tungsten deal.
Some Western investors have worried that Russian and Chinese leverage over Kazakhstan could jeopardize supplies of critical resources to Western nations, should Moscow or Beijing decide to intervene. But so far, Kazakhstan been a reliable supplier, even as relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated over Ukraine.
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