As readers know, most people in this country are blissfully unaware of the geography and location of other countries until the American government gets involved in some sort of war involving them. Even after that, the vast majority in this country do not have the desire to look up the location, let alone history, of those countries and will instead mindlessly repeat whatever comes out of the mouth of credentialed morons aka “experts”. While this ignorance about the rest of world was not a big problem in previous decades when the West had far more global influence and power, things have changed for the worst in past two decades. However, even the humiliating debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan have not made the necessary impression on delusional dummies who make foreign policy and military decisions in this country.
With that in mind, let us talk about Kazakhstan- a country in central Asia which most Americans are only familiar with as the punchline from the 2006 “comedy” movie by a greedy, hypocritical and thin-skinned comedian known as Sacha Baron Cohen. So let me first give you a rough idea of where this country is located, what it produces etc. Kazakhstan is a large, but landlocked, country located in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. By area, it is 9th largest in the world, but is very sparsely populated. Imagine a country with land area of western Europe but less people than Taiwan or Sri Lanka. Most of Kazakhstan is not especially suitable for human habitation. While areas with less extreme climate do grow enough basic food such as cereal crops to support the small population and export some, the majority of its export income comes from the sale of its considerable mineral resources- especially oil and gas.
According to many estimates, Kazakhstan has the second largest uranium, chromium, lead, and zinc reserves; the third largest manganese reserves; the fifth largest copper reserves; and ranks in the top ten for coal, iron, and gold. Most relevantly, it has the 11th largest proven reserves of both petroleum and natural gas in the world. While the area occupied by that country was once part of multiple Mongol and Turkic kingdoms, Russian influence kept growing during the 19th century and it eventually became a semi-autonomous region of the Russian Empire and then USSR. It was only after the dissolution of USSR in 1991 that Kazakhstan became an independent nation in the modern sense of that word. However, it has remained close to Russia- thus far. Even today, Russians are the 2nd largest ethnic group in Kazakhstan at around 20% with about 15% more being of Ukrainian descent- though most of the later identify more with Russia, if you catch my drift.
With that out of the way, let us talk about the ongoing situation in that country. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the area which is Kazakhstan has been either been a vassal or part or Russia for most of past 150 years. Even after its independence in 1991, it remained a faithful, if boring, ally and supporter of Russia for the first two decades. However during the past decade, its leadership has increasingly become interested in becoming a part of the “West”- a desire which is comic on many levels. To that end, the leadership of that country (including the erstwhile Nazarbayev) increasingly started antagonizing Russia. While this initially took the form of small tiffs over relatively inconsequential stuff such as launching hypergolic-fueled Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, things have kept deteriorating. It does not help that the dumb leaders of Kazakhstan have allowed civil society organizations and NGOs, who are mostly funded by USA and Soros, foment trouble in that country.
To make a long story short, we have now reached a point where the current leadership of that country wants to exit CSTO and help implement western economic sanctions on Russia. It seems that the morons currently in charge of the country believe that increasing economic ties with neighboring China and increased business with West will be an adequate substitute for screwing up their long-term relationship with Russia. However even a fairly quick, but objective, analysis of the overall situation will show you that the current political leadership of Kazakhstan is either retarded or too corrupt to rule with any degree of competence. It is also possible that they are unable to read maps or lack a basic understanding of geopolitics. Personally, I think that the possibility of their leadership being retarded and grossly incompetent is higher than being venally corrupt, which is never a good thing. Here is why..
1] As mentioned near the beginning of this post, Kazakhstan is a land-locked country which shares border with Russia, Uzbekistan, China, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Notably, the three neighboring -stans (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan) are themselves land-locked. Even the short coast of Kazakhstan on the Caspian Sea leads to Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. In other words, bulky mineral exports (especially oil and gas) have to through (or to) Russia and China. Given the history of Kazakhstan, most of its pipelines, railways and roads lead to Russia. There is also a rather large Russian minority working in those sectors. To be blunt, spoiling relations with Russia and antagonizing the important Russian minority is a surefire way to fuck over your biggest cash earning industries (oil and gas, copper, uranium etc). It should also be noted that a lot of agricultural and other products need by that country, but not produced locally, come from Russia because most cities are either near the Russian border or on transport routes developed during the soviet era.
2] Some of you might say- but.. what about replacing Russia pipelines, rail and road routes etc by those leading to, and from, China. Well.. that has already occurred to some extent in past two decades. But geopolitics is a bitch. See.. China has no issues with increasing investment and trade with Kazakhstan as a country, but there are two reasons that it would be most unlikely to support Kazakhstan against Russia. Firstly, China has no interest in having another western-NGO infiltrated, potential NATO-ally on its borders. Let me remind you of the main reason China intervened in both the Korean and Vietnam war was that they did not want a western military ally on their border. Then there is Xinjiang. It turns out that Kazakhs and people in Xinjiang are both Turkic Muslims with minority East-Asian ancestry. Some in Kazakhstan also believes that a part of Xinjiang was wrongly taken from it in the past. Long story short, China wants Kazakhstan as a compliant and harmless vassal, which is best accomplished by not disturbing the status quo for next couple of decades.
To summarize, the rapidly increasing desire by political leadership of Kazakhstan to distance itself from and antagonize Russia is a incredibly dumb idea, which ignores basic facts of geography, infrastructure, supply chains, demographics and geopolitics. Cozying up the West won’t solve the resultant problems and China has no interest in having a western-infiltrated country bordering the most troublesome region of their country. One can only wonder what the current leadership of Kazakhstan is “thinking”.
What do you think? Comments?
It is amazing you can write a few thousand words about Kazakhstan trying to distance itself from Russia and develop closer relations with China and Western Europe without once mentioning why this is happening. You claim it is because the leaders are stupid, but you don’t mention the elephant in the room, the war in Ukraine. I guess your Russian intel/disinfo bosses won’t allow you to state the obvious.
Because of the Ukraine war, Russia is under sanctions from much of the world. Russia has also decided to use natural gas as a weapon to put pressure on Europe and is cutting off gas exports to Europe. The result is Russia really doesn’t have markets for the oil and gas exports from Kazakhstan anymore. Russia is only going to pay very low prices for these exports if it is even willing to purchase any. Meanwhile European countries are searching the world for non-Russian gas supplies and willing to pay high prices for them. Kazakhstan is looking for alternative markets paying higher prices for its exports.
The other thing of course is the leaders of Kazakhstan have realized that the central Asian countries that were formerly part of the USSR are likely future targets for Russian invasion. The Kazakhstan military is very weak. In January Kazakhstan had to ask for Russian troops to help put down a protest. Although Kazakhstan has elections, they are not considered free and fair elections. It is basically an authoritarian state that had kept itself in power with Russian military assistance.
Kazakhstan leaders need Russia to stay in power, but the Western sanctions on Russia have destroyed Kazakhstan's export markets through Russia, so they are seeking new export markets for the products Russia really has no market for anymore.
I might add that it is not just Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and other countries in the region have been trying to increase trade with Western Europe and China to replace the lost Russian export markets. Azerbaijan signed a deal to double gas exports to the EU in July using an existing network of pipes linking the Caspian region with Europe.