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Topic: Critical Minerals, and Human Rights Blog Brand: Silk Road Rivalries Region: Eurasia Tags: Central Asia, China, Democracy, Kazakhstan, Russia, United States, and Uzbekistan Now More Than Ever, Central Asia Needs Political Reform April 9, 2026 By: Dania Arayssi
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Central Asia’s nations cannot expect their economic reforms to succeed without advances toward democracy.
The United States’ engagement with Central Asia has gone through several phases—from the intense post-9/11 period, when the region served as a critical logistics corridor for operations in Afghanistan, to stretches of relative neglect when other regions took priority. Some administrations recognized Central Asia’s strategic value; others treated it as peripheral. But the region’s importance is not cyclical, even if Washington’s attention is. Central Asia holds vast reserves of critical minerals essential to the energy transition. It offers a viable alternative commercial corridor between Europe and Asia that bypasses both Russia and the Red Sea.
However, the United States’ engagement with Central Asia has so far been driven by transactional deals and agreements rooted in economic interests. This should not be the only approach the United States should take toward Central Asia. Instead, the United States is in a strategic position to spread its values and beliefs and strengthen economic and transactional ties. Economic and political reforms should not be kept separate; both should be pursued simultaneously by the United States and Central Asia.
Under the current administration, the United States has increased its engagement with Central Asia in various ways, including the C5+1 framework, multiple trade and critical-mineral agreements, and the invitation of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to join the Abraham Accords. These are meaningful ways to strengthen ties between the Western hemisphere and the region, but they share a common thread: a focus on transactional economic relationships.
While the United States has the opportunity to leverage its deepening relationships with these economies to encourage meaningful political reform, it needs to do so in Central Asia. The transactional relationship shaping ties between the United States and Central Asia needs to expand to include the sharing of American political values and norms, such as freedom, accountability, and transparency, because building sustainable and stable political systems in this region is essential to maintaining and growing the economic partnerships Washington is building.
Former US Ambassador Daniel Rosenblum to both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan made this point directly in a recent podcast. The relationship between the United States and Central Asia is transactional, but political governance and reform should be pursued simultaneously. Without political reform, the transactional gains Washington is building in the region rest on an unstable foundation.
Central Asia’s Political Systems Are Still Stuck in the Past
Central Asia is filled with post-Soviet political systems that fall short of maintaining a sustainable, representative, pluralistic system of governance. For example, according to Transparency International’s 2026 Corruption Perceptions Index, the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region scores just 34 out of 100, with Kazakhstan at 38 and Kyrgyzstan at 26. Freedom House rates both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan as “Not Free” due to restrictions on political rights, civil liberties, and media independence.
The political reality in Central Asia is one of the barriers behind the limited growth of private investments in the region and to the economic partnership Washington is trying to build. Investors, whether American or otherwise, need predictable legal systems, transparent processes, and independent judiciaries to resolve disputes. A recent OECD report on critical materials in Central Asia discusses how the region can increase private investment by improving transparency, labor rights, and gender rights, particularly women’s rights to engage in political and legal activities, including those related to mining projects. The report highlighted the significant presence of state-owned enterprises, which further limit private investment in the region, as well as a lack of transparency in regulations.
For instance, Kazakhstan is one of the largest economies in the region and has pursued market-oriented reforms to attract Western private investments. However, these economic reform policies were not accompanied by political reforms to reduce inequality in the system. The result is mass frustration and grievances over dire economic conditions. For instance, widespread protests erupted in January 2022 over fuel price increases, rapidly escalating into unrest that spread across the country, particularly in Almaty.
These protests reflected not only economic grievances but also mass frustration with the elite capture of Kazakhstan’s political system. The relationship between economic and political development is mutually dependent in the sense that you cannot sustain one without the other. Growth that benefits a narrow elite while excluding ordinary citizens from the decision-making process will eventually produce instability that is not in the interest of both Washington and the governments of the region.
Why the US Is Uniquely Positioned to Help Central Asian Political Reform
China and Russia, the region’s major external players, have no interest in promoting governance reform. Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative brings infrastructure and investment, but it also introduces a development model explicitly divorced from political liberalization. Moscow’s interest in the region is primarily about maintaining its influence, which is currently declining, and preventing any possible democratic reform from spreading to its own territory. Neither offers Central Asian societies a path toward the kind of institutional resilience that sustains long-term prosperity.
The United States, in contrast, can offer something that neither Moscow nor Beijing can: a partnership model in which economic engagement and governance improvement reinforce each other. This political reform model rests on the recognition that transparency, the rule of law, press freedom, and political pluralism are core principles of a country’s institutional infrastructure, including its economic policies.
A Dual-Policy Approach: Economic and Political Reform
Central Asia needs a dual policy approach based on political and economic reforms, as they are complementary, not competing.
First, when the US signs economic agreements with these countries, governance expectations should be included in these agreements. Not as deal-breakers, but as milestones—if these economies strengthen their courts, open up procurement, and protect civil society, they gain access to deeper trade preferences and critical-mineral partnerships. As these economies continue to partner with the United States and Western investors, they must improve their transparency and accountability, which are important factors investors consider in investment decisions.
Second, the United States should reinvest in educational diplomacy. Educational diplomacy through exchange programs remains one of the most effective tools for building long-term affinity with American values and advancing American interests abroad. Yet international student enrollment in US universities dropped 17 percent in the fall of 2025, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE), and the State Department has cut roughly $100 million in funding for exchange programs. At the same time, China is expanding its own educational presence in the region through scholarship programs such as Confucius Institutes.
Third, Washington should leverage the C5+1 format not just for trade deals but for serious governance reform. The format already exists and needs substance, including serious conversations with the leaders of these economies on strategies for their political reforms, supported and encouraged by the United States through election monitoring and oversight.
Fourth, the administration should support and empower Central Asian civil society, civic activist leaders, independent media, anti-corruption organizations, and citizen monitoring groups. This support is necessary because these actors can oversee the performance of not only the government but also the private sector and ensure accountability and transparency.
Central Asia is experiencing geopolitical competition. On one side, China is expanding its economic influence. At the same time, Russia, despite being occupied with its war in Ukraine, remains deeply connected to the region through cultural and security ties. The region’s young, increasingly educated populations tend to speak more English than Mandarin or Russian and are actively seeking opportunities to build a better, more sustainable future.
The United States has a real opportunity here to help build the institutional foundations that make these trade and economic deals sustainable. Economic growth and political governance are not sequential; they are simultaneous and can occur together. Countries that achieve both economically and politically sustainable governance become stable and prosperous.
About the Author: Dania Arayssi
Dania Arayssi is a senior analyst at the Central Asia Center of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy. Arayssi also serves as an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and teaches at George Washington University, where she teaches Comparative Political Economy. Before joining New Lines, Arayssi held analytical and research roles with the World Bank, USAID, Oxfam America, and the US Army War College. Her work has been published in Foreign Policy and The Digest of Middle East Studies as well as regional and international media outlets.
The post Now More Than Ever, Central Asia Needs Political Reform appeared first on The National Interest.
Источник: nationalinterest.org