An American Strategy for Greater Central Asia

April 21, 2025 S. Frederick Starr,  S. Enders Wimbush ,  Svante E. Cornell,  Mamuka Tsereteli,  Laura Linderman Central Asia-Caucasus Institute
Related Categories: Arms Control and Proliferation; Human Rights and Humanitarian Issues; International Economics and Trade; Islamic Extremism; Public Diplomacy and Information Operations; Resource Security; Afghanistan; Caucasus; Central Asia; China; Europe; India; Iran; Japan; Pakistan; Russia; South Asia; South Korea; Southeast Asia; Thailand; Turkey; Ukraine; United States

America needs to design and implement an effective strategy for Greater Central Asia to enhance the United States's competitive position in a region that will affect the Russia-China relationship, the geopolitical competition in Asia, and key resource markets, particularly uranium, oil, and natural gas.

The proposed strategy ensures open access in Greater Central Asia to mitigate potential security breakdowns among powerful nuclear states, and secures opportunities for profitable American investment through technological partnership, resource extraction and development, and logistic facilitation.

The proposed strategy also strengthens America’s ability to address four principal areas of U.S. concern: Iran's possible nuclear breakout; opportunities for U.S. investment and private sector profit from engaging Central Asia; Islamic terrorism as a prevailing concern; and the focus of U.S. global security strategy currently shifting to China, which it views as an emerging peer competitor.

 

Specific Policy Measures: U.S. Governmental Dimensions

  • Adopt an inclusive definition of the region to include Azerbaijan, renaming it "Greater Central Asia"; rebrand the US platform for interaction as C6+1 and emphasize common actions and activities, and prioritize region-wide initiatives over those directed solely to individual states.

  • Appoint a Special Presidential Envoy for Greater Central Asia at the National Security Council with responsibility for designing and monitoring US activities in Greater Central Asia and for coordinating the activities of the US regional embassies.

  • Address bureaucratic obstacles to a unified regional approach within the Department of State and other U.S. Government bodies. Beyond appointing a Special Envoy, this should include exploring institutional realignments to better reflect the transregional nature of America’s interests in the region, without requiring full reorganization. This would ensure that the interlinked Americans interests in the core Central Asian states and their logical geopolitical and economic extensions in the South Caucasus, Mongolia and Afghanistan are reflected in the U.S. government approach.

  • Create a non-governmental U.S.–Greater Central Asia Business Council based in the United States, with satellites in each core country to assist in the creation of protocols for common visas for business and tourism, fast border crossings, region-wide communications, and standardize trade.

  • Establish a Greater Central Asia Regional Security Framework focused on intelligence sharing, counter-terrorism cooperation, and joint security initiatives, with support from institutions like the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies.

The Objective

To design and implement an effective strategy that enhances the United States’s competitive position while reducing adversaries’ advantages in an arena that is firmly within America’s larger strategic and economic interests.

The proposed strategy ensures open access in Greater Central Asia to address uniquely four principal areas of U.S. concern:

First, Iran’s possible nuclear breakout is of particular concern to U.S. interests. In fact, six states of Greater Central Asia are surrounded by major powers, four of which—China, India, Russia and Pakistan—are today nuclear powers. A fifth, Iran, actively aspires to that status, while a sixth, Turkey, has the potential to become one. Conflict in this region thus carries formidable global risks that heighten the possibilities of conflict while reducing deterrence. Greater Central Asia lies at the intersection of these states’ converging or colliding interests.

Second, opportunities for U.S. investment and private sector profit from engaging Central Asia are among the most appealing anywhere in the world. Critical transport corridors traversing Greater Central Asia, including what is often referred to as the 'Middle Corridor' warrant America’s support, for they promise to reduce the region’s isolation from world markets, thereby normalizing trade patterns that advance U.S. competitive advantage. Greater Central Asian states are the source of abundant energy and rare minerals and other resources that increasingly power the economies and technological revolutions of the U.S. and potentially its adversaries. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, for example, are rich in uranium, rare earths, lithium, and other critical materials the U.S. and other actors seek. U.S. interest in gaining priority access to these resources for itself or its allies is paramount, as is acquiring the capability to deny them to U.S. adversaries, particularly to China.

Third, Islamic terrorism is a prevailing concern of both the states of Central Asia and U.S. authorities who track this pathology’s movement into the West and the larger world. Some terrorism is homegrown, the result of marinating ideologies and power rivalries with deep roots in history, while a great deal more is transported into Greater Central Asia across porous borders from states like Iran and Pakistan, as well as through efforts by more distant Middle Eastern Islamic regimes to expand their area of influence and operations. Afghanistan is a dynamic crossroads of both trends. Aggressive monitoring of this dynamic and close cooperation with the Greater Central Asian states in aggressive counter-terrorism efforts is a key American interest.

Fourth, the focus of U.S. global security strategy is currently shifting to China, which it views as an emerging peer competitor. Far from being a distant and unrelated appendix to this competition, Greater Central Asia is central to it. Beyond sharing critical borders with the region, China’s pathway to Europe and the Middle East runs through Greater Central Asia, which links China’s strategies geopolitically to both Russia and Iran. Greater Central Asia is thus a lynchpin in these fluid geopolitical and economic dynamics, which are susceptible to U.S. influence and shaping through effective engagement. This strategy supports efforts to reduce China’s geographic and economic advantage by fostering alternate trade corridors and diversified mineral supply chains that benefit the U.S. and its allies.

The Analysis: The Emergence of Greater Central Asia

Since the collapse of the USSR the United States has adopted a series of strategic documents pertaining to Central Asia. While these contain important affirmations, they are less true strategies than lists of unrelated projects deemed worthy at the time. Still less did they relate the region to the United States’ global strategy as a whole.

Thus, US strategy to date has accepted the Soviet definition of Central Asia, i.e., Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Three decades later this is no longer valid. The group of core Central Asian states must now include Azerbaijan, as the Central Asian states themselves and Azerbaijan see themselves as a distinct political-economic region. This understanding warrants the use of “Greater Central Asia” as the term denoting the geopolitical focus of U.S. strategy. But the “Greater” strategy must also include proximate and bordering states on whom the success of the core depends. These include Georgia, Armenia, and Mongolia, which comprise the flanks of the economic region and provide existential support via facilities (transport, ports), economic self-interest, and long-standing geopolitical comity.

Afghanistan, too, must be included in any Greater Central Asia strategy, at first as an outlier but eventually as part of the organic whole. A core without its extensions can never be larger than the sum of its parts. Afghanistan fits naturally into this strategic pathway. America currently approaches that country as a problem to be contained, and with scant reference to the larger geopolitical environment. While affirming its historical justification, that approach must now be reevaluated, and in such a way as to promote Afghanistan’s long-term evolution from an unremitting problem to a more manageable contributor to the region’s stability and prosperity.

In fact, over the millennia Afghanistan has been an integral and at times even dominant part of Greater Central Asia. Leaders and populations in all core states and in Afghanistan itself acknowledge shared strategic interests and the necessity of pragmatic regional partnerships, based on bonds with the rest of Greater Central Asia that are organic and permanent. Moreover, the increasing tempo of security and economic dynamics involving Afghanistan and its bordering or nearby states (e.g., China, Pakistan, Iran and India), poses challenges and opportunities for U.S. strategic engagement that until now remain unacknowledged and undefined.

Finally, it is the fate of the six states of Greater Central Asia to be surrounded by major powers, four of which—China, India, Russia and Pakistan—have nuclear arms; a fifth, Iran, actively aspires to that status, while a sixth, Turkey, has the potential to become a nuclear power. Conflict in this region thus carries formidable global risks, which the United States has a fundamental interest in preventing.

Many outside powers, beginning with Japan and now including South Korea, the EU, Russia, China, Turkey, and the U.S., have created consultative mechanisms with the Central Asians. While largely beneficial, such arrangements exert a powerful centrifugal force on Greater Central Asia; importantly the region also needs strong centripetal forces. It should be the mission of the U.S. and friendly powers to encourage and strengthen the collective agency of the states as an emerging regional entity on the global stage that can serve as a stabilizing force across its neighborhood.

The states of Greater Central Asia themselves are actively working to expand their formal collective structures by drawing selectively on the experience of ASIAN, the Nordic Council, and other multinational bodies. The presidents of the states of Greater Central Asia will welcome America’s support for that process, provided those structures remain exclusively for Greater Central Asians. Such regional structures began to emerge with the creation of a Central Asia Economic Union in the 1990s, which was abolished when Russia’s president first sought to join, then replacing it with his Eurasian Economic Union. The U.S. must help to assure that such a takeover does not occur a second time.

The stability of Greater Central Asia, and hence the success of any American strategy, must be grounded in the recognition that the regions’ states themselves are the best instruments through which effective strategy must be channeled. The United States must therefore work with, rather than on, the region’s governments. This can be done in the confidence that prosperity in Greater Central Asia will over time lead to greater political freedom, free markets, and openness to the world. The advancement of democratic norms and human rights concerns may follow, as they have in other societies, but the U.S. must not make their achievement a condition for engagement or a test to be passed beforehand.

Strategic Actions Within Greater Central Asia

The U.S. cannot hope to invest economically in Greater Central Asia at the level of, for example, China’s Belt and Road (BRI) or even Turkey’s proliferating projects. Nor can the U.S. guarantee the region’s security with boots on the ground, significant military intervention, or membership for the states of Greater Central Asia in larger security organizations. Acknowledging this, the following measures are both possible and potentially beneficial:

  • Facilitate the creation of exclusive region-wide structures: A severe constraint on U.S. policies in Greater Central Asia in the past has been the need to deal on any given issue with five to eight separate states. As a collective, Greater Central Asia lacks region-wide coordinating institutions and, hence, a single voice on key issues. This condition, favored by the former colonial power, invites “divide and conquer” tactics. A prime strategic goal for the regional states now is to develop linking institutions that are exclusive to the region that enable its member states to act in concert when circumstances demand it. The United States should welcome this development of exclusive region-wide structures and facilitate it, but it must leave the work of constituting such entities and their actual operation to the countries themselves.

  • Aggressively champion the U.S. private sector’s interests in the region: There are significant existing American investments in Greater Central Asia across a range of industries, from oil and gas to the IT sector, and the region is an increasingly attractive market for American industrial and consumer goods. The U.S. should enhance the economic viability of the region by promoting U.S. corporate investment in and management of trade corridors that link the region with Europe and South and Southeast Asia, as well as ports and transit point in all directions. It should also welcome imports from the region in carefully defined areas.

  • The proposed Greater Central Asia Regional Security Framework must address local and regional threats including cross-border terrorism and other opportunistic disruptions. Its purpose is to promote coordination and integration among the region’s military and national security professionals. This should be advanced through the development of common security protocols, intelligence sharing, joint operations, and technical interoperability. Underlying these initiatives should be increased opportunities for military officers and security personnel from Greater Central Asia to interact with American counterparts at the six U.S. Department of Defense Regional Centers, especially the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany; command training centers, such as the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; war colleges; and defense and military analytical institutions. Such engagements will promote common understandings of security challenges and of both U.S. and regional approaches to them.

  • Accelerate efforts for engaging emerging elites through programs that attract them to the U.S. for educational and professional advancement, and activities within the Greater Central Asia region that link them with peers. The U. S. should preserve and expand educational grants and enlist universities and corporations to create specific programs for students from Greater Central Asia, with the goal of familiarizing them with America’s free market system, political processes, and media and information organizations.

  • Through new initiatives on a region-wide basis, the US should foster press, internet, and TV– in the English language and local languages. Only with difficulty can citizens of Greater Central Asia inform themselves on region-wide developments or gain access to American perspectives on world events. Recognizing that it is in a severely competitive situation with other major powers, the US must update and improve its narrative through both official and private information channels, emphasizing the region as a whole rather than a collection of separate countries, and in such a way as to advance the use of the English language across the region.

  • Identify and pursue convergence of U.S. interests in Greater Central Asia with the strategies of other friendly powers. The U.S. should initiate a consultation and coordination with similarly engaged friendly powers, including Europe, Japan, Turkey, Korea, and India, with the objective of leveraging shared strategies where the interests of parties converge.

The views and analysis presented in this publication reflect the collective assessment of the Staff and Fellows of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (CACI), developed through extensive consultation with subject matter experts across the United States, Europe, and Greater Central Asia. While individual contributors have provided valuable insights, this report represents an institutional perspective rather than any single author's viewpoint. The conclusions and recommendations herein are intended to advance informed policy discussion on matters concerning Central Eurasia and should be attributed to the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute as an organization.

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