Last week, a delegation led by Senator Sodiq Safoyev, First Deputy Chairman of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan (and former ambassador of Uzbekistan to the United States), visited Washington, D.C. to continue the republic’s campaign for repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment and establishment of normal trade relations with the United States.
Jackson-Vanik, which many consider a relic of the Cold War, still applies to the Central Asia republics of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. However, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), “Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are
certified as compliant and receive conditional NTR [normal trade relations} status, subject to annual review. Turkmenistan receives temporary NTR status via a presidential waiver.”
In September 2023, U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) introduced bipartisan legislation “to end Cold War-era trade restrictions for Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan and grant those countries permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status.” And in March 2023, Representative Trent Kelly (R-MS) introduced the Uzbekistan Normalized Trade Act to authorize the President “to extend nondiscriminatory treatment (i.e., normal trade relations treatment) to products of Uzbekistan” when the President certifies to Congress that Uzbekistan has joined the World Trade Organization (WTO).
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Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan are WTO members; Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are negotiating accession. In June, the United States Trade Representative voiced “full support” for Tashkent’s WTO bid during a visit to the country and both sides announced the republic “opened its market to meat and poultry from the United States.”
Its common to hear that the Central Asian republics are in a “tough neighborhood,” caught between China, Russia, Afghanistan, and Iran. But the American government hasn’t gone all out to get the republics in its camp, despite cordial day-to-day relations and the support the republics gave Washington when it retaliated against the Afghanistan-based Taliban after the
9-11 attacks when they provided access to airfields (Uzbekistan and the Kyrgyz Republic), refueling rights (Tajikistan and “permanently neutral” Turkmenistan), and landing rights (Kazakhstan). In addition, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan hosted parts of the Northern Distribution Network used to supply NATO forces in Afghanistan which was especially critical when Pakistan blocked NATO supply lines in 2011 after a NATO raid killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Uzbekistan publicly hosted meetings with the Taliban in 2018 and used the opportunity encourage the inter-Afghan peace process, and Tashkent later facilitated the humanitarian evacuation of Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover in 2021.
Despite Washington’s bonhomie when U.S. and Central Asia officials meet, Hunter Stoll of the Rand Corporation observed, “For most of the 21st century, however, Central Asia largely served as a launchpad for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and little more than that.”
Also regularly heard is the republics are a “crossroads of civilization” though many of the recent roads are courtesy of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Eventually, Washington and Brussels realized they had to compete with China and cobbled together the Partnership on Global Infrastructure and Investment, a $600 billion alternative to China’s $1 trillion BRI.
The region hosts infrastructure that connects East and West such as the just-commissioned China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, the trans-Caspian Middle Corridor, and the New Eurasian Land Bridge from China to Europe that bypasses Russia. With this many major projects, “there's many a slip twixt cup and lip,” but the continued relevance of the Eurasian land routes was highlighted when the Houthis of Yemen upended world supply chains by attacking Israel-connected ships in the Red Sea.
And at the top level, no U.S. president has ever visited the region, though Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping understand that “Eighty percent of success is showing up,” and
regularly visit for bilateral meetings and multi-lateral events, such as the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Kazakhstan.
U.S. president Joe Biden met the republics’ presidents in a group at the United Nations in September 2023 which sent a weaker signal than the bilateral formats and state visits leveraged by Putin, Xi, and Iran’s late president, Ebrahim Raisi. Though the citizens of the republics value their new independence, they can’t fail to notice which leaders bother to show up which will shape the governments’ receptivity to cooperation with the regional hegemons.
Official Washington is fully engaged with the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas civil war, preparing to fight China, and the 2024 election, so there won’t be any presidential visit to the region before early 2025 at the earliest, but a presidential signature on trade legislation will be better.
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The republics will be receptive to some American policies and will act as a mediator if needed, but they don’t want to be America’s cat’s paw. After 20 years of U.S.-sponsored mayhem in the region, they need to make up for the “lost decades” and that means engaging with Russia, China, Iran, and Afghanistan, all potential trade partners, but America’s enemies. And most American policies are freighted with moral hazard in that if they (literally) blow up, their promoters are safely in the U.S. behind the Atlantic and Pacific moats, while the locals suffer violence, refugee flows, and economic dislocation.
If Washington drags its feet on Jackson-Vanik and normal trade relations, Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian republics have options with the SCO, BRICS, and the Eurasian Economic Union, and that “ever closer union” the Eurocrats in Brussels are always talking about may happen in Eurasia.
By James Durso for Oilprice.com
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